UOC details educational trip of theological schools’ students to Lebanon

The educational trip of the students of theological schools of the UOC to the Patriarchate of Antioch, which was organized with the blessing of Patriarch John X of Antioch and All East and His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv and All Ukraine, has come to an end. The Department for External Church Relations (DECR) of the UOC reports the details of the trip.

The trip lasted three weeks, from October 21 to November 11, 2021. The student group included Hieromonk Nestor (Chaika) and Kirill Negruta (Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary), Nikita Maslov (Odessa Theological Seminary), Vadim Tomashevsky (Pochaiv Theological Seminary) and Stepan Senchuk (Volyn Theological Seminary).

During their stay in the Middle East, the Ukrainian seminarians attended lectures at the Faculty of Theology of Balamad University (Lebanon), which were read by leading theologians and biblical scholars, and also took an intensive language course that introduced them to the basics of the Arabic language.

An important part of the trip was getting to know the Christian culture and customs of the Middle East. The students visited ancient monasteries, where they communicated and received spiritual instructions from the abbots, abbesses and monks of monasteries; they also went on a number of excursion trips across Lebanon, namely to such ancient places as Byblos, Sidon, Baalbek and others.

In Lebanon, the students of Ukrainian theological schools had several meetings with the hierarchs of the Patriarchate of Antioch, from which they heard words of prayer support for the believers of the UOC.

The student delegation returned to Ukraine with new knowledge, impressions and invaluable experience, the DECR UOC stressed.

The UOJ also wrote that the abbot of the Lebanese monastery met with the Volyn seminarians of the UOC.