The Greek-Catholic Church asks for equalityThe Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC) is asking President Viktor Yanukovych to guarantee the equality before the law of all churches and religious organizations. “Ukrainian legislation – points out a document sent to Yanukovych by the Synod of Bishops of the Supreme Archbishopric of Kyiv-Halych in recent days – prescribes that all churches and religious communities duly registered with the state institutions enjoy equal rights. We therefore appeal to you, in your role as guarantor of the Constitution”, to ensure that “this equality of all the churches and religious organizations before the law and in public life be conscientiously respected”. “Protecting only one particular confession and not others – warn the bishops – will widen the gulf between citizens and State, and this could be very damaging for the Ukrainian nation as a whole”. The Greek-Catholic Church also expresses its concern for the failure to respect, on 25 February, the tradition of inviting the leaders of all the Ukrainian Churches to the joint ceremony in the cathedral of Santa Sophia for the official installation of Yanukovych as President. Recalling the Gospel warning of the “sad consequences of a kingdom divided against itself”, the bishops warn: “The forces that don’t appreciate the historical traditions” of our country, and “don’t associate their own future with it”, are attempting to impose their own unilateral agenda on Ukraine, whereas “our nation is multi-confessional”. At the end of the document the bishops underline the importance of “ethical standards in political life” and the need to “pay attention to spiritual as well as to economic life”. The UGCC comprises some five million faithful in the country.Cardinal Husar speaks online with migrants”Immigration: the Church’s task in the ministry for migrants”: that’s the theme of the press conference held in Kiev in recent days, at which Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, Archbishop Major of Lviv of the Ukrainians, spoke of the problems of migrants. Immigration, explains a press release, “will be the main theme of the Synod of the Bishops of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC) in 2010”. For a couple of hours Cardinal Husar then spoke online with several Ukrainian emigrants in various countries in the world to gather some suggestions with a view to making recommendations for the Patriarchal Synod in terms of pastoral care and social assistance for emigrants and their families throughout the world. At the present time, according to the UGCC, almost a quarter of the Church’s members are living abroad for purposes of work; that’s why the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church can with good reason be called the “Church of migrants”. Recalling the synod on immigration last June, the Ukrainian bishops stress that “the Church has the obligation to raise her voice on behalf of fellow-citizens obliged to emigrate” and ask “the institutions to pay greater attention to this phenomenon”. The Church considers it necessary for “a special category of Ukrainian citizens – recognized as emigrant workers – to exist at the legislative level” and a special legal status to be accorded to them. The creation of “a single state organization in the field of migration” is urgently needed, according to the bishops”.Exhibition on martyrs of the faith in LvivA photographic exhibition dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the legalization of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church was inaugurated at the “Andrey Sheptytskyj” National Museum in Lviv in recent days. “Towards the light of the Resurrection through the spines of the catacombs”; that’s the title of the exhibition, realized by the Institute of History of the Ukrainian Catholic University with the support of the Regional Council of Lviv, the archives of the Department of State of the Security Service, the Museum of the History of Religions and the Centre of Research on the Liberation Movement. “With this exhibition – explains the director of the Institute of History of the Church, Father Andrei Mykhaleiko – we wish to express gratitude to the known and unknown martyrs and confessors of the faith who” with their witness “have made possible the regeneration of the Church on Ukrainian soil”. On display are archival materials of the Institute, including eyewitness accounts and memories of persons who participated actively in the life of the Church in the years of its underground existence, gathered between 1992 and 2009; documents from State archives and photographs from private collections. “The exhibition – continue the organizers – covers a time span from 1939 to 1991 and reviews the three phases of the tragic but heroic history of the UGCC in the 20th century: violent elimination, subterranean activity and legalization in 1989”. The exhibition also recounts “the biographies of representatives of the Greek-Catholic clergy, and the history of monasticism and the laity” in Ukraine, testified by “deep Christian faith and unshakeable loyalty to the Church and to the nation”.
