Head of UGCC: Universal unity must be implemented in Ukraine
The Ukrainian Uniates consider the Phanar their Mother Church, but at the same time they live, according to Shevchuk, in full communion with the Pope.
On February 5, 2023, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said that the unity of Orthodox and Catholics should be implemented in Ukraine, the UGCC website reports.
According to Shevchuk, the UGCC "is the largest Eastern Catholic Church in the world", which preserves "the liturgical, spiritual and canonical heritage of the Byzantine Church".
The Ukrainian Uniates, says Shevchuk, “consider the Church of the Ecumenical Patriarchate their mother because the good news of the Holy Gospel came to us from Constantinople.”
However, the head of the Uniates noted, the UGCC "lives in full and visible communion with the successor of the Apostle Peter, the Pope of Rome."
“As the Church of the Kievan tradition, we live and bear witness to the state of the Church in our lands, in which She lived before the division, before the schism between Rome and Constantinople,” Shevchuk said.
He stressed that Ukrainian Uniates want to embody this thousand-year tradition of our memory and competition for unity among Christians today.
“The Pope of Rome, the successor of the Apostle Peter, is a minister of the universal unity of the Church of Christ, its visible center, the voice that calls for everyone to be one, as the Lord commanded us... As the local Church of the Ukrainian people, we want to introduce the fruits of the search for universal unity into the Christian Church context of Ukraine,” Shevchuk summed up.
Earlier, the UOJ wrote that the theologian of the OCU told when its structure would merge with the UGCC.
