Uniate chief wants a union of Greek-Catholic with Orthodox

Churches must unite to implement Christina values in the life of the Ukrainian society. It was claimed by the leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk in his interview to Prague-based radio “Freedom”.

“We are not interfering into internal Orthodox processes, though we pray for the unification of the Ukrainian Orthodoxy, work at the rebirth of the union of all Churches under St. Vladimir baptism so that we could talk about the existence of One Local Church in Ukraine,” stated Sviatoslav Shevchuk.

“We must translate Christian values into the life of the Ukrainian society. If we are engaged with our narrow corporate issues, fight for the power, property, spheres of influence, we will betray the needs of the Ukrainian society and fail to fulfill our mission – to teach people Logos,” he added.

This is not for the first time that the Greek-Catholic leader has expressed his desire to embrace Churches of Ukraine. In 2011, in the interview to Ukrainian Truth edition, Shevchuk announced that “one local church is a Christ-given order.”

It will be reminded that in 2016 Sviatosalv Shevchuk came down hard on the Orthodox All-Ukrainian Cross Procession having referred to it as “so called”. Besides, in the interview of Uniate cardinal Lubomir Guzar, in which he spoke about the Cross Procession, the word “Ukrainian” in the UOC abbreviation was used in inverted commas.

On 12 February 2016 the ROC Primate and the Pope signed a joint declaration in Cuba which condemned “the Uniatism method of the last centuries”. In July of the same year there was held a Pan-Orthodox Council in Crete at which Orthodox hierarchs condemned “union”.

Earlier the UOJ reported that Kiev Patriarchate wants to get united with Uniates.