Our people are convinced: if the pope comes, the war will end – UGCC head
Shevchuk said that expectations are growing in Ukrainian society for a papal visit as a prophetic gesture of peace.
The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, believes that a conviction is strengthening in Ukrainian society about the need for the pope to visit Ukraine, despite the absence of any official confirmation of such plans. He said this while answering questions from Ukrinform journalists about a possible papal visit under wartime conditions.
According to the UGCC primate, he currently has no information that Pope Leo’s visit to Ukraine is planned in the near future. At the same time, he emphasized that calls for such a visit are clearly being voiced by a wide range of groups within Ukrainian society.
“Whoever comes to Rome from Ukraine, everyone says the same thing: the pope must come. And it is important that people from very different circles are saying this – circles that certainly did not coordinate with each other,” Sviatoslav Shevchuk said.
He recalled the precedent of Pope John Paul II’s visit to besieged Sarajevo during the war in the former Yugoslavia, calling that step “bold and prophetic.” According to him, today’s Ukraine is capable of ensuring the pope’s security no worse than was possible in Bosnia in the 1990s.
According to the head of the UGCC, there is a deep spiritual conviction among the people that the pope’s visit could become a turning point toward ending the war. “This is not naïveté, but an inner intuition of faith – what in theology is called sensus fidelium, the sense of faith of God’s people,” he said.
At the same time, in his view, a papal visit requires lengthy and serious preparation. He recalled that Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ukraine took nearly a year to prepare.
“We understand that the bar was set very high then, and every subsequent visit will be compared to that. Therefore, we want a possible visit of the pope to Ukraine to be no less profound and meaningful,” the head of the UGCC concluded.
As the UOJ previously reported, Shevchuk believes that the pope understands that without Ukraine, Europe has no secure future.
