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UKRAINE: Grass roots ecumenism
By John Newton
Representatives of Ukraine's Churches and Aid to the Church in Need at an ecumenical meeting in Kiev, Ukraine.
A leading Latin Rite Bishop in Ukraine has said relations with the Russian Orthodox Church are getting increasingly warmer.
Bishop Marian Buczek of the Latin Rite Diocese of Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhya, north-east Ukraine, told Aid to the Church in Need that the appointment of Patriarch Kirill as head of the Russian Orthodox Church was good news for ecumenism – despite the hard-line stance the patriarch has publicly taken since his election.
Bishop Buczek said: “Patriarch Kirill knows the Roman Catholic Church very well. He met Pope John Paul II and also met Pope Benedict XVI while chair of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department for External Relation.”
He added: “The relationship between the two churches is getting warmer and warmer.”
The bishop stressed the improvement in relations in the east of the country, saying that his diocese had excellent relationships with Russian Orthodox in Ukraine.
When he first came to Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhya, which shares a border with Russia, one of Bishop Buczek’s first moves was to establish contacts with the local Orthodox Metropolitan.
In his diocese the Latin Rite Church is a minority – the majority of Christians belong to the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and there are many mixed marriages between members of the two Churches.
Bishop Buczek said: “For this reason we want relationships between the hierarchies to be good, but there is also a sense of unity which comes through mixed Catholic and Orthodox families.”
The bishop explained that his diocese ran catechesis classes for Catholic and Orthodox couples who are intending to marry, to help them understand the Catholic Faith.
Often the Orthodox partner may be apprehensive, said Bishop Buczek.
But he added: “After the course the Orthodox one says thank you to the priest or nun – as it helps them not only to learn about Roman Catholicism, but Christian faith in general”.
The bishop was also keen to arrange a meeting between Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic youth.
He said this would help them to understand each other better and to give common testimony of the Christian faith to those who do not go to Church.
Bishop Buczek paid tribute to Aid to the Church in Need for the helping the diocese of Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhya, which was erected only seven years ago and covers much of eastern Ukraine.
He said: “Since 1991 ACN has supported the Latin Rite Church in Ukraine by building new churches and repairing those churches in need of restoration.”
The bishop underlined how the aid was particularly important in eastern Ukraine, which suffered under communism thirty years longer than western Ukraine.
Speaking of the Soviet era, Bishop Buczek said: “It was a spiritual desert – by and large there were no priests here for 70 years.”