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Ukrainian Catholic leader hopes to mend ties with Russian Orthodox

Aug. 24, 2012
By Catholic News Service

KOLOMYYA, Ukraine -- The major archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church said he hopes to follow up a Polish-Russian joint message by pursuing a similar reconciliation process with Russian Orthodox leaders.

"We should also take such a path of reconciliation -- without this, it will be impossible to stop Russification in Ukraine and Ukrainophobia in Russia," said Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev-Halych.

"If we somehow try to settle painful questions of the past as Christians in light of the Gospel and to heal our memory solely by means of reconciliation, then we can build something constructive," he said at a mid-August news conference in Kolomyya.

On Aug. 17, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and the president of the Polish Catholic bishops' conference signed a joint message urging Poles and Russians to set aside centuries of anger and prejudice and work together to maintain their countries' Christian identities.

Shevchuk said the declaration had not specified "what Poles forgive the Russians for and what the Orthodox church intends to apologize to the Latin church in Poland for," but he said the text had provided "a very powerful example."

Eastern and Latin Catholics make up 10 percent of Ukraine's population of 50 million, compared to around a third belonging to the country's three rival Orthodox denominations.

Church ties in Ukraine have long been tense over Orthodox complaints of Catholic proselytism, as well as over the reclaiming of churches by Eastern Catholics.

Shevchuk said Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Kirill of Moscow seemed ready to communicate "not only with the head of the whole Catholic Church, but also with the head of a national church." He noted that most Russian Orthodox conversations about Ukrainian Catholics were at the Vatican, "almost always without us."

Just a side note: officially Patriarch Kyril was in Poland as part of the custom (as far back, I do not know, but would love to get information on its history) of a newly enthroned autocephalous hierarch visiting the other autocephalous hierarchs, in this case Met. Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland, who was at and approved the signing. Hence it is different then when His Holiness appears in Ukraine, which still remains within his patriarchate. Maj.-Archb. Shevchuk's vocal opposition to the return of seized properties of the patriarchate (e.g. the Pochiv Lavra) to Met. Volodymyr of Kiev and All Ukraine, Pat. Kyril's present suffragan and Lord willing future peer, haven't helped further what it reported here.

That's a good point.

I hope it's a misquote: Patriarch Kirill is Patriarch of Moscow, not Metropolitan.

He also recognizes Poland as a nation, and the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church as its Church, points, unfortunatley, not in play in Ukraine.

As for communicating with "with the head of the whole Catholic Church," I'm sure he prays to Our Lord daily.

You got me there. I don't know why the article said "Metropolitan".



I think the context makes it clear that "national church" means national church within the Catholic Communion.

??? Kyril has met with the President of Ukraine, and has a Metropolitan in Ukraine. If the assertion is that the MP does not recognize Ukraine as a nation, that doesn't make sense. If the assertion is that Ukraine does not recognize Poland as a nation, that is equally questionable as Poland was one the first nations Ukraine recognized after independence and vice-versa, signing a formal diplomatic agreement within two months of Ukrainian independence and one of Ukraine's main trade partners.

The history of the POC is full of tragedy. But the visit of Kyril to the POC should not be any great surprise considering the post-Sergian MP had declared the 1924 proclamation of autocephaly by Patriarch Gregorios as void, and issued its own declaration of "autocephaly" in 1948 to a church now fully within a geographical area of Soviet control. The previous hierarchy that had historical connections to the EP and relations with the UAOC was removed (along with most of the faithful) during the aftermath of World War II and Aksia Wisla. Some of the UOC-USA and UOCC are descendants of those, and eventually went back under the omophorion of the EP in North America.

The office of Metropolitan of Warsaw remained curiously vacant until 1951, when Moscow appointed Archbishop Makary, the same who presided over the forced "dissolution" of the UGCC in 1946-1947, to be the head of the newly "autocephalous" POC. So the distrust of some is not without historical basis.

China?

Just kidding, I actually haven't any idea what area you mean.

So, who is going to repair relations between the Latin Church in Poland and the UGCC?

Poland was by that time (1948) within the "Iron Curtain" under Muscovite control. That's what I meant.

Nary a word was mentioned by the Cardinal Archbishop about any "scandal" caused by married POC priests working in primarily Latin areas. If only we can get rid of those Ukrainians...

Which Ukrainians? The POC has them, and I've not heard that they want to get rid of them.

And? Between the World Wars the Polish Orthodox Church and the predecessor of your UGCC were under the iron heel of the Second Polish Republic and its "Revindication Campaign."

The Tomos that Constantinople gave Warsaw was void. In contrast, the Tomos that the POC received from her Mother Church in 1951 was in proper order.

The pre- and non-Sergian PoM declared the 1924 Tomos void, as it was. There is no distinction in the Patriarchate of Moscow on that.

Distrust goes back before 1948, and Moscow wasn't the sole source of it, before or after 1948-you did mention Aksia Wisla.

I have not seen any document from Constantinople actually relinquishing its Tomos nor consenting to Moscow's post-Sergian usurption of the previous Tomos; I would argue that the 1924 Tomos was itself in "good order" and certainly not from a hierarchy that had been compromised by Soviet intrigue. Her mother Church before the appointment of Makary was Kyiv, not Moscow, according to the 1924 Tomos. The fact that Makary had to be appointed by Moscow after his "success" in L'viv with the attempted liquidation of the UGCC and not elected from a newly "autocephalous" POC in 1951 speaks for the actual "autocephaly" that was enjoyed after the removal of the previous UAOC hierarchy by imprisonment, exile or assasination at the end of World War II.
No argument there, centuries earlier.