CWN - The retired leader of the Ukrainian Catholic Church has said that the Ukrainian government should be “dishonored for what it does.”

Cardinal Lubomyr Husar expressed sympathy for anti-government demonstrators who have occupied some buildings in the nation’s capitol, protesting moves to withdraw from the European community and ally more closely with Russia. The demonstrators have acted “very sensitively,” Cardinal Husar told an interviewer. “The government should thank God that the people behave as they do, because it could be worse.”

Cardinal Husar suggested that the current Ukrainian government is likely to fall because of its unpopular policies. “They are vanishing,” he said, “and this is good that they are vanishing.”

Cardinal Husar was the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church—the largest Eastern Church in communion with Rome—from 2001 until his resignation in 2011 at the age of 78. Major Archbishop Syiatoslav Shevchuk was chosen by the Ukrainian Catholic synod to replace him.