Father Oleg is a new recruit in the profession. A graduate of Catholic University and Lviv seminary in Western Ukraine, he is yet to rise in rank by proving himself in fieldwork. In the meantime he enjoys and measures his new responsibility...
Father Oleg is a new recruit in the profession. A graduate of Catholic University and Lviv seminary in Western Ukraine, he is yet to rise in rank by proving himself in fieldwork. In the meantime he enjoys and measures his new responsibility with a contagious air of humility and childlike serenity. At 35, this young Greek Catholic priest has his own parish and does not mind covering a distance of 80 kilometers from Lviv to join his parishioners in the village of Cholhyni. On this Monday of Pentecost they all have gathered in their little church decorated with icons and tree branches. They have come to commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit, and also the coming of summer, on the occasion of this “Green holiday” paying homage to nature’s forces. Here religion and traditions are taken very seriously and fervour is ever so much greater after years of persecution.
The Greek Catholic Church was founded in 1596 with the attachment of part of Ukrainian Orthodox clergy to Rome. Called also “the Uniate Church”, it emancipated from Moscow, keeping, though, its Byzantine rite. With the course of time this Church became the national and spiritual flag of a people deprived of their own State but it experienced its dark hours since 1946.
Prohibited and forcefully annexed to the Russian Orthodox Church by Stalin, its activity was kept clandestine in Ukraine and survived in the diaspora. Many of its faithful, among them Cardinal Slipyi, filled Soviet concentration camps, without denying their faith. The collapse of Communism inaugurated the renewal of a community, made up of approximately 6 million faithful. Most of them live in Western Ukraine, which is the bastion of Ukrainian independence.
In a tense climate the restitution of the Church’s possessions provoked battles with the Orthodox, even in the smallest villages. The Greek-catholic reappearance irritates the Moscow Patriarchate who is close to the Kremlin. Deprived of hundreds of parishes since the independence, Russian Church lose also influence in Ukraine due to the emancipation of the two secessionist Churches : the Orthodox Autocephal Church and the Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate.
All of these three newly reborn Churches seek to regain their historical heritage. But despite their rehabilitation, the Moscow Patriarchate still keeps the upper hand on half of all Ukrainian parishes and the large religious centers of the country, such as the Kyiv Lavra. It feels its authority to be threatened and discontentedly views the recent moving of Greek Catholic administration headed by Cardinal Husar to Kyiv, one of the cradles of Eastern Christianity.
In the West of Ukraine the conflicts have subsided with time, and the two denominations, willy-nilly, get along peacefully. Small villages, like that of Cholhyni, have two churches on a small strip of land, each of the religious communities praying separately despite a common Byzantine rite. Political and religious tensions as well as theological debates are present in everyone’s mind, but now the time has come for ecumenical debate and reconstruction. Meanwhile the Greek Catholics are enjoying their newly found freedom, churches full of people spring up all over the place.
In view of a never ending political, social and economic crisis in the post-Soviet Ukraine the Church remains a great moral authority and an important social structure in the cultural and national development of the country – a role still difficult to assume for the young Ukrainian state alone. Like many other Greek Catholics, Father Oleg actively supported the “Orange Revolution” in Lviv and later on in the streets of Kyiv. But one of his fondest memories is the Pope’s historic visit to Lviv in 2001 – a great day for a community all too soon forgotten.
© Cyril Horiszny
