Bishop Job of Stuttgart has called for an investigation into the killing of a monk at the Sviatohirsk Lavra in eastern Ukraine, saying the death has become a painful test for Orthodox Christians and expressing concern that the incident has received insufficient media attention.

According to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), monk Varsonofy was killed in an attack on August 23, while two other members of the monastery community — monk Grigory and novice Andrei Kirienko — suffered serious stab wounds.

In a statement published on the website of the German Diocese, Bishop Job referred to an account given by one of the injured men. According to that testimony, a confrontation took place between members of the monastery and Ukrainian servicemen before the attack. The bishop said the soldiers allegedly demanded that the monks repeat a nationalist slogan, while Varsonofy responded by identifying himself as a monk and proclaiming his faith in Jesus Christ. Bishop Job said the monk was subsequently killed.

The bishop stressed that these circumstances require investigation and that his account is based on the testimony of an injured survivor. The allegations have not been independently verified.

Bishop Job also placed the incident in the broader context of tensions surrounding the UOC, saying that pressure on the Church has continued for several years.

“A monk of the wrong Church — from the point of view of Ukrainian nationalism — was killed,” he said.

The bishop further argued that representatives of several Orthodox Churches had reacted to the killing, while Ukrainian and German media, in his assessment, had devoted insufficient attention to the case. He attributed what he described as limited coverage to the broader information and propaganda struggle surrounding the war in Ukraine.

Bishop Job also recalled longstanding ties between the German Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and the Sviatohirsk Lavra. He said humanitarian assistance had previously been sent to the monastery and to displaced people who had taken refuge there.

Speaking about Varsonofy, Bishop Job described him as a potential martyr, stressing that Christian tradition associates martyrdom with witnessing to the faith. “If the testimony of one of the injured, cited above, corresponds to reality, then monk Varsonofy is a martyr in the true sense of the word,” he wrote.

Earlier, Metropolitan Isaac, the Patriarchal Vicar for the German and Central European region of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, called for the truth to be established and justice to be pursued in connection with the attack. Metropolitan Nicholas, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, also expressed condolences to the monastery community.

The Sviatohirsk Lavra is located in an area affected by active hostilities in the part of Donetsk region under Kyiv's control. The monastery has repeatedly come under shelling during the war.

The UOC has said Ukrainian armed forces may have been involved in the monk's killing. The Orthodox Journalists' Union, a media outlet sympathetic to the UOC, has accused Ukrainian authorities and most Ukrainian media of downplaying the incident and portraying it as an ordinary domestic crime.