Ukrainian Orthodox Church
Schisms & ROC & More
New churches spring up as religion conquers and divides Ukraine
The Irish Times
July 23, 1993, CITY EDITION
SECTION: WORLD NEWS; Pg. 8
HEADLINE: New churches spring up as religion conquers and divides Ukraine
BYLINE: By SEAMUS MARTIN
DATELINE: LVIV
BODY:
AS Ukraine's economy deteriorates to crisis point, a building boom is under way in the country's western region. The completed constructions are not factories or houses, but churches.
In villages which previously had one church, usually Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox by denomination, church buildings are springing up to accommodate, the return of the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to the scene, and a split in the former Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, totally banned in Soviet times, is making massive advances into the Orthodox denominations, with priests and entire congregations defecting at a dramatic rate. Orthodoxy's attempts to fight back have been hampered by a split in its own ranks between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in communion with Moscow and a breakaway Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kiev Patriarchate), headed by a former KGB agent and tennis partner of President Leonid Kravchuk
- Metropolitan Filaret. Some bishops of the third branch of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, which is Orthodox in ritual but holds its services in Ukrainian instead of Church Slavonic, have supported
Metropolitan Filaret.
But since the death of its Patriarch Mstislav in Ontario, Canada, earlier this month, its position in the religious checkerboard of western Ukraine has become unsure.
The "Greek Catholics", an eastern-rite church in communion with Rome, owe much of their success to a mistrust in Orthodoxy's past connections with the Communist Party, but also to a professional campaign by young Americans and Canadians of Ukrainian descent who have taken western Ukraine's capital by storm.
The result has been that in the Lviv region, with a population of 1,800,000, a church which officially had no membership now claims 1.4 million adherents.
On Sunday, the congregation of the Church of St Andrew, in downtown Lviv, overflowed on to the street. The service was broadcast on loudspeakers and the Greek Catholic faithful continuously made the sign of the cross in precisely the same way as Orthodox believers. Icons of St Nicholas, the miracle worker, and other Orthodox saints adorned the baroque interior of a place of worship whose design is far more Roman that Greek.
Father Kenneth Nowakowski, the vice-chancellor of the Lviv Greek Catholic Eparchate and a native of Saskatchewan, described the Orthodox services, with their heavy reliance on incense and music, as a mixture of "smells and bells".
The old Orthodox churches provided the people with "wonderful concerts" and little else. The Greek Catholics, on the other hand, gave the people the religious splendour of Orthodoxy, a link with Rome, and has set up a hospital and a dental clinic in the Lviv region.
Father Nowakowski spoke to me in the ornate drawing-room in the chancellery of the Church of St Yuri, which was previously occupied by the Orthodox Church. Downstairs, where the Orthodox churchmen had installed a sauna, the Greek Catholics had put in a computer room with databases showing how many believers and priests they had won from their rivals. In the church's crypt lay the remains of Cardinal Josef Slipyi, whose body had been returned from Rome after his death in exile.
Relations between the Greek Catholics and the Orthodox churches, not surprisingly, are strained. When the head of the church, Cardinal Ivan Miroslav Lyubachivsky, arrived in Kiev this week to celebrate Mass at a local church he was picketed by a group of local Orthodox believers - understood to be supporters of Metropolitan Filaret - and had to abandon his plans.
A large plot of land has been bought in Kiev for the establishment of to build a Greek Catholic cathedral, similar to the one the community has in Rome.
In Moscow, the Patriarch Alexei II, to whom the main Ukrainian Orthodox Church is loyal, has called for the banning of missionary activity by foreigners.
In Lviv, once part of the Austo-Hungarian empire, there are other churches too. The main cathedral, situated in a square named after the communist heroine Rosa Luxembourg, was also full of worshippers last Sunday.
On this occasion, the Mass was not in Ukrainian, or church Slavonic, but in Polish and the congregation were adherents of the main branch of the Roman Catholic Church.
At the beginning of the second World War the city was strongly Polish, but now only 25,000 people or 2 per cent of Lviv's population are Poles.
They stand back from the religious tension between the Orthodox denominations and the Greek Catholics but are not unaffected.
Their aged and feeble bishop, Dr Wladyslaw Kiernitski, speaking in French, confined his comments to the following: "Now we have freedom of religious expression but some problems remain. We have few difficulties with the Russian and Ukrainian churches. But we do have problems with the Greek Catholics. They have our churches and they won't give them back."
Earlier in the day, 1 had felt something incongruous about the eastern-rite Greek Catholic service in St Andrew's.
The icons to St Nicholas, the miracle worker, and other eastern Slavic saints stood in a western baroque setting. Carved in stone in the portico was the unmistakable Polish eagle.
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