Turning the pages back... October 27, 1996 (10/23/05)

Turning the pages back...

October 27, 1996

Speaking with The Ukrainian Weekly in October of 1996, Wasyl Kolodchin, head of the Ukrainian World Patriarchal Federation, said he saw no reason, or valid excuse, why Rome had not recognized a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Patriarchate. He called the Vatican's failure to act "strictly political" in nature.

"The only hindrance to recognizing a Patriarchate is the Moscow Patriarchate [of the Orthodox Church]," explained Mr. Kolodchin. "That's because for some reason in Rome they think that if a Kyiv-Halych Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church is recognized it would be the end of ecumenism, and so they are afraid, and Moscow has taken advantage of that."

Mr. Kolodchin said there is no reason not to recognize a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Patriarchate after the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s expressed its desire that the Eastern Churches should form patriarchates. "All the patriarchates in the East, except for the largest and strongest, today have been recognized," explained Mr. Kolodchin, who was in Lviv as representative of the federation during the week of October 4-10, 1996, for the Patriarchal Sobor of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.

The longtime leader of the movement of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church laity for recognition of a Patriarchate, who is a resident of Detroit, said that for more than 30 years the Catholic Church had come up with one reason after another for denying recognition of a Patriarchate to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. "At first it was that you do not have your own territory. Then, after independence, it became that our Church should first re-establish itself in Ukraine. Now it is the ecumenism situation."

The idea of a Patriarchate for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church was first proposed by Major Archbishop Josyf Slipyj, who arrived at the Vatican in 1963 after spending 18 years in the gulag of the Soviet Union for refusing to denounce the pope and the Catholic Church. Later that year, during a speech before the Second Vatican Council, he proposed a Patriarchate for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. In 1969, at the fourth synod of Ukrainian Greek-Catholic bishops, he declared the Church a Patriarchate and in 1975 accepted the title of Patriarch Josyf I.

Mr. Kolodchin explained that a Patriarchate does not necessarily find its existence in acknowledgment by Rome but in the attitude of its laity, clergy and bishops. "All the Eastern Churches that were perfected by a patriarchate, were not given it. It began as with us - by a grass-roots movement. And when the movement gained sufficient strength, Rome acknowledged the formally existing patriarchate. We must maintain a strong spine, we must continue to work as a patriarchal Church, and when [Rome is ready] they will acknowledge it."

Source: "Head of World Patriarchal Federation sees no valid reason for inaction on Patriarchate," by Roman Woronowycz, Kyiv Press Bureau, The Ukrainian Weekly, October 27, 1996, Vol. LXIV, No. 43.

| Home Page |