Source: Associated Press By YURAS KARMANAU KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — The rough-looking young men brought clubs and brass knuckles to the Pechersk Monastery in Kiev , one of Orthodox Christianity’s most important pilgrimage sites, apparently seeking to disrupt worship. Police spread-eagled them against a wall decorated in faded centuries-old frescos of solemn saints, then hauled them away. On the other side of the dispute, at a small church in the center of Kiev, a dozen men organized round-the-clock guard duty, worried that nationalist radicals might make their third attempt in a year to seize the place of worship. The incidents a week…
In this Sunday, July 27, 2008 file photo, The thousand-year-old Monastery of Caves, the holiest site of Eastern Orthodox Christians, against the background of the Dnipro River, in Kiev, Ukraine. Tensions over the imminent formation of a Ukrainian Orthodox church independent of Moscow are raising fears that nationalists may try to seize Russian church properties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, FILE)