From the official website of the Ukranian Catholic Church (
http://www.ugcc.org.ua/eng/):
Ukrainian Greek Catholics In Athens Celebrate Community's 5th Anniversary
24.05, [08:59] // News // UGCC Info
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic community in Athens, Greece, is celebrating the 5th anniversary of its foundation. This news was reported on 23 May 2003. The festivities are being organized by the Embassy of Ukraine in Greece together with the Greek Catholic Exarchate.
Among the participants of the celebration are Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), Archbishop Nikolaos Foscolos of Athens (Latin rite), the apostolic nuncio in Greece, Bishop Yulian Voronovskyi of the Sambir and Drohobych eparchy of the UGCC, and Viktor Kalnyk, ambassador of Ukraine to Greece.
According to Fr. Ihor Yatsiv, press secretary for the head of the UGCC, the circumstances that force Ukrainians to seek jobs abroad, which is currently a rather wide-spread phenomenon, also lead people to deepen their faith and re-evaluate their priorities in life. “People want to come to church and be part of a community which praises God in their native language and becomes a place for spiritual healing,” said Fr. Yatsiv.
Today, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic community of St. Nicholas belongs to the parish of the Holy Trinity (the cathedral for Greek Catholics of the Byzantine tradition). According to Fr. Lubomyr Datsiv, Athens is home to a rather large Ukrainian community. “Every Sunday,” said Fr. Datsiv, “approximately 300 to 400 people participate in the liturgy, and on holidays the number rises to over 1,000. After the liturgy there is always a long line of people who want to talk to the priest, get some advice, and share their pains.”
The impetus for the establishment of a Ukrainian community in Athens came from Archimandrite Serge Kelleher, Irish by descent, who was the first to serve a liturgy in Ukrainian, five years ago. After that, Fr. Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Ph.D., who was then studying moral theology in Rome and is currently vice-rector of the Lviv Seminary of the Holy Spirit, founded the UGCC community in Athens.
Report in Ukranian (yes, Alex, that is for you, our favourite Ukranian in this forum) with pictures of the liturgical life of the Ukranian Community of Saint Nicholas in Athens:
http://www.ugcc.org.ua/ukr/library/interview/community/ Yours in Christ
