In the story headlined “Archbishop mounts pressure for papal visit to Ukraine, says Moscow getting in the way” (Crux, a news site that covers the Catholic Church, September 5), senior correspondent Elise Harris reported: “Archbishop Borys Gudziak, one of nearly 50 Ukrainian Greek-Catholic bishops in Rome this week, says he and his fellow prelates are pushing harder than ever for a papal visit to Ukraine – a trip that he said is crucial to ending conflict in the country, but which is being held up by fear of potential reprisal from Russia.” Speaking of the war in eastern Ukraine, Metropolitan Borys said: “Almost every day someone is killed. This has been going on for five years. It’s like a terrorist act in your country every day. This is thousands of terrorist acts.” He added, “We believe that if the pope came to Ukraine, the killing would, if not stop, would lessen,” explaining that an invitation for a papal visit was issued a long time ago.
Crux reported that the archbishop-metropolitan said the delay in accepting the invitation is due at least in part to fear over backlash from the Russian Orthodox Church, despite the pope’s consistent attention to Ukraine and his frequent appeals for an end to the ongoing war. “The opinion of Moscow regarding anything significant in the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church has been a shadow over us for at least 50 years, since the mid-1960s,” Metropolitan Borys said. He said he is using the occasion of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church’s September 2-10 synod in Rome to raise the issue of a papal visit with the Vatican officials they meet again after a two-day meeting between Ukrainian bishops and Vatican officials in July.
To read the full text see: https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2019/09/05/archbishop-mounts-pressure-for-papal-visit-to-ukraine-says-moscow-getting-in-the-way/?fbclid=IwAR3-jErAxTZVw1YhsLLokuS_8rrGwpXQRo1D2K7eelZKOJrgNN6ZXa5HkXg.