Sviatoslav Shevchuk raises claims to universality of the UGCC

Belonging to the Ukrainian people is not the only identity of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. God entrusted the Greek Catholics with making disciples of all nations and opening to them the tradition of the "Kiev Christianity," said the head of the UGCC during his sermon on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the transfer of the Lviv Theological Academy.

"What makes us Ukrainian Greek-Catholics? Belonging to the Ukrainian people? Today, one-third of our parishes in the diaspora consists of people who are not of Ukrainian descent and do not speak the Ukrainian language," said the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholics.

According to him, the Greek Catholics need to "get rid of heresy of being Galician" and go beyond the perceptions of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as "the Galician enclave in the east and south of Ukraine."

"Our identity, the identity of the Church is a faith in the saving action of our God, which is manifested in the history of Kiev Christianity," said Archbishop Sviatoslav.

"And when today our missionary leaves the Lviv Theological Seminary for Kramatorsk, Simferopol, Melbourne, he might think I'm going only to the Ukrainians, I’m going only to the lost sheep of the Ukrainian home. But Christ opens much larger horizons. He says: "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit". That's what it means today to be Greek-Catholic," declared Shevchuk.

He added that it is necessary to discover the "richness of Kiev Christianity" in different languages to different cultures.

Earlier it was reported that the Vatican hinders the creation of ecclesiastical structures for the Uniates in the diaspora, in particular in Italy and Spain. The Catholic Church does not approve of the ambition of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to get the status of the Patriarchate and create parallel church structures abroad.