the Ukrainian patriarch in search of political and spiritual support for his country

the Ukrainian patriarch in search of political and spiritual support for his country

Throughout the meeting, this Tuesday, October 29, the man did not depart from a sweet smile. “The fact that I am still alive is a miracle,” confides this young 54-year-old patriarch. When the conflict began and Russian troops attempted to surround the capital, the front froze 20 km from his home. A decisive moment for the prelate, who then became aware of the resilience of his people. In fact, at this time he met a young man involved in a self-defense organization in the sector. The latter tells him that he spoke with a Russian taken prisoner during these first battles, a soldier covered in tattoos evoking other conflict zones, in Libya or Iraq, where he had been engaged. This man of war, who had blood on his hands, was there, dead of fear. “This is where I understood that the people of Ukraine will win,” confides Mgr Shevchuk, in this ability to resist in the face of a seasoned army. Moreover, the savagery of the Russian troops in the occupied territories of the east of the country testifies to their blindness: because it is the Russian-speaking populations that they mistreat in this way, the very people who said they did not see where the problem was, faced with the annexation desires of their Russian neighbor.

Fight against religious manipulation

At the head of the Greek-Catholic Church of Ukraine, estimated at 8 million faithful, the man is a good observer of the challenges for the Christian Churches involved in this fratricidal conflict. This ecclesial community has, in fact, the particularity of being of Orthodox tradition, through its rite and its functioning, but attached for several centuries to the Roman Catholic Church. An intermediate status which has often been difficult to live in the geopolitical sphere of Slavic orthodoxy. Today, she is a spearhead in denouncing the drift of the Russian Orthodox. Mgr Shevchuk uses an English neologism to describe the reality: weaponization of religion. In other words, the transformation of religion into a tool of armed indoctrination. “To hear the Russian patriarch promise the troops going to the front that their struggle is sacred and that by killing Ukrainians they will have a remission of their sin, is just unbearable.”

Paradoxically, this caricature of theology has brought the Ukrainian Churches closer together. Even the Orthodox one, which until then was attached to the Moscow Patriarchate. A grassroots ecumenism necessary in this secular State which, unlike its big neighbor, refuses that the State can exploit religions. The ongoing crisis has also brought the Eastern Churches of the country closer to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. “He has been a friend for more than ten years. It was at his invitation that the Orthodox communities gathered around him in September openly condemned the heresy of the ideology of the Russian world advocated by the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill. The situation is, on a moral level, worse than what took place in Nazi Germany: because Nazism was imposed on the German Church Here, we have an opposite situation: it is. Russian Orthodox Church which gave birth to this genocidal ideology and which placed it in the hands of the Russian state.”

Support for Christians in exile

For Ukrainian Greek Catholic Christians in the occupied territories, the situation remains difficult. All their churches are closed and the priests driven out. The latter continue their work by telephone and internet to encourage small Christian communities to meet clandestinely, in homes. Like in Soviet times. And for all those who fled the country to form an immense diaspora in Europe and elsewhere, there is also no shortage of work to support, encourage and strengthen.

Archbishop Shevchuk’s trip goes in this direction: Poland, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Türkiye and now France. Everywhere, “people need to be held in their arms to be reassured and supported”. A moving experience for the prelate who sees the usefulness of the Church which unites and heals, in these troubled times. The trip also has a political dimension. In France, the prelate has just met President Macron and the Minister of the Interior, to discuss material support for fighters and support for refugees.

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