Turning the pages back... May 30, 1988 (05/31/98)

Turning the pages back...

May 30, 1988

During his summit with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, on May 30, 1988, President Ronald Reagan visited the Danilov Monastery in Moscow and urged legalization of Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Later, he hosted a tea for Ukrainian religious and political dissidents at Spaso House, provoking the ire of Mr. Gorbachev and Russian Orthodox Church leaders. Mr. Reagan's remarks and actions came just days before the official June 5 opening of celebrations in Moscow of the "Millennium of Christianity in Kievan-Rus'" - organized at the behest of the Russian Orthodox Church and with support from the Soviet government. The Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow widely promoted the Millennium as the 1,000th anniversary of the Russian Orthodoxy, claiming Volodymyr the Great for the Russian Church and ignoring the historic importance of Kyiv, thereby provoking protests from Ukrainian Orthodox and Catholic faithful around the world.

Pope John Paul II was not invited to the Moscow celebrations since the Vatican had made the legalization of the Catholic Church in the USSR a pre-condition for attendance. The patriarch of Constantinople reversed his decision to attend the Moscow celebrations as a sign of protest against the Russian Orthodox Church's decision to elevate the status of Orthodox Churches in Georgia, Japan and North America, a move the ecumenical patriarch perceived as a threat to his authority in the world.

On May 29, a day before Mr. Reagan's show of support in Moscow for the Ukrainian Churches, hierarchs of the Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Churches issued a statement on the occasion of the Millennium, calling for the legalization of the Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic Churches in the USSR, and churches throughout the U.S. rang their bells for 1,000 seconds at noon, as part of the "Chimes for Freedom" commemoration. On June 5, the day Millennium observances began in Moscow, religious and political rights activists in Kyiv protested Russia's celebrations, and Ukrainian Americans held the Millennium Truth March in Washington.

(Sources: The Ukrainian Weekly, May and June 1988; Final Report of the National Committee to Commemorate the Millennium in Ukraine.)