10.08.2019, Ivano-Frankovsk.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) was able to overcome the USSR, which was “an environment of darkness,” the UGCC leader Svyatoslav Shevchuk said on August 7 during a Uniate pilgrimage in the village of Krylos, Ivano-Frankovsk region, the Union of Orthodox Journalists reports.
“Our Church was able to overcome a country, an environment of darkness, which the Soviet Union was,” Shevchuk said.
The pilgrimage in Krylos celebrates the 30th anniversary of UGCC’s emerging from the underground. The guests at the event were local residents, government officials, the monastics and the clergy.
Shevchuk stressed his active political position, “Before the God, we cannot be neutral. We must accept our place and position.” He expressed hope that the UGCC will fulfill its mission in the 21st century.
The UGCC was one of the originators of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, OUN (organization banned in Russia). Many of the OUN (organization banned in Russia) leaders were sons of Uniate clergymen. In the summer of 1941, the leader of the UGCC, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptitsky, welcomed the German army and its leader Adolf Hitler when the Nazis occupied Lvov.
The UGCC was dissolved at the Lvov Church Council in 1946. It was legalized again during perestroika in 1989.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
