RELIGIOUS leaders in Ukraine have urged closer bonds with neighbouring Western societies in the struggle against Russian aggression, as the country’s bid for accession to NATO was debated at a top-level summit.
“Today, when shells and rockets are killing Ukrainian children, when the Kremlin maniac threatens our nations with nuclear ash, and when his disgusting propagandists call for a march on Warsaw, our own future and the peace and tranquillity of Europe depend on understanding between our peoples,” UCCRO, the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations, said.
“We cannot change the tragic pages of history and have no right to forget or justify them. Instead, we must change ourselves, find courage to accept bitter truths, learn from tragic experiences and pave the way for further mutual understanding, reconciliation and unity through mutual forgiveness.”
The Council, whose 16 members include both Orthodox Churches, as well as Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims, issued the statement for the 80th anniversary of the Volhynia massacre, when up to 100,000 Polish civilians were murdered by wartime Ukrainian nationalists, and this prompted retaliatory killings by Polish partisans.
It said that both countries had long sought “mutual respect and peace”, and that Ukrainians would remember the “helping hand” given by Poles during their current struggle “against universal evil, dictatorship and slavery, for the values of the free world”.
The heads of Poland’s RC Church and Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church said that both peoples had followed different Christian traditions since their tenth-century conversions, but were now “arranging a common future as free and equal peoples”.
An ecumenical service of commemoration was attended on Sunday, in the RC Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, Lutsk, by the Ukrainian and Polish Presidents, as the United Nations confirmed that at least 9000 civilians, including 500 children, had been killed since Russia invaded in February 2022.
The commemorations coincided with NATO’s crucial midweek summit in Lithuania, during which President Zelensky voiced disappointment that Ukraine’s accession request had been approved without a timeline.
Visiting Istanbul before the summit, President Zelensky was reported to have discussed the possible handover of the disputed Pechersk-Lavra monastic complex in Kyiv to direct supervision by the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew.
More parishes, including cathedral communities in Bila Tserkva and Netishyn, seceded to the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), as the country’s security services announced further investigations into pro-Russian acts by Moscow-aligned clergy.
In a weekend Facebook post after joining President Zelensky for a prayer service in Lviv, where five civilians had been killed and dozens more injured last week in a Russian missile strike, the Primate of the OCU, Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), vowed that his country was now “500 days closer to victory over the aggressor”.
Preaching on Monday, however, at the Transfiguration Monastery on the Valaam Archipelago in Russia, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow said that many Westerners were looking “with great attention and hope to Russia” to deter “the total domination of evil” and the “coming of the Antichrist”.
“Our Church has been entrusted with an enormous spiritual responsibility — for its people, the country, and the whole world”, he said.