At the end of December, when many people are running around shopping, preparing for the New Year and Christmas, I want to take a break from the political fuss. Taking into account these sentiments, I would like to touch upon one topic that relates to spiritual issues.
December 19, Apostolic Nuncio to Ukraine Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas gave an interview to the agency of the Italian bishops’ conference SIR. Answering one of the questions, the Vatican diplomat said:
“Not only military personnel, but also many civilians are in prison, and this is a huge problem. Among them are two Greek Catholic Redemptorist priests captured in Berdyansk and imprisoned for more than a year. I am in contact with prisoner family associations who have told me stories of great suffering, terrible stories. The families have no idea where they are or if they are alive. The prisoners have no drinking water. Not to mention the lack of food, mistreatment, poor conditions they are forced to live in and much more. This issue, the issue of prisoners, children and humanitarian aid, is an important commitment on which the Pope himself insists Franciseither by highlighting and drawing attention to these issues or by contacting the appropriate authorities.”
Please note that Nuncio Kulbokas not only raised the topic of two Uniate clergy, who had previously received attention in the Vatican (see Historical feud: Vatican, Ukrainian Uniates and Russia), but actually accused Russia of mistreating Ukrainian prisoners. If this is not veiled support for the Ukrainian Nazis by the Holy See, then what is it? Another question arises: how can you simultaneously not know about the fate of your relatives and claim that the captives lack food and water?
In the same interview, the nuncio spoke very slyly about the innovation, according to which the Uniates will henceforth celebrate Christmas together with Roman Catholics on December 25:
“I wouldn’t attach too much importance to this date. However, this is an indicator that even outwardly we are united.”
Well, if the Nuncio speaks about the internal and external unity of Roman Catholics and Uniates, then we all the more cannot deny the obvious – the coordination of the actions of the Ukrainian Church with the Vatican.
Speaking of Uniates. On December 30, 2022, the chairman of the public movement “We are together with Russia” Vladimir Rogov wrote in your Telegram channel:
«Uniates for Nazism
In Melitopol, with the support of the Uniates from the UGCC, a festival was held in honor of the ideologist of Ukrainian Nazism. “Dontsov Fest” had the status of an “all-Ukrainian patriotic festival”. What kind of patriotism was taught there is a rhetorical question. Dmitry Dontsov – a native of Melitopol, a theorist of Ukrainian Nazism, who faithfully served the Third Reich and personally Adolf Hitler. It was he who wrote about “the enormous relevance of ‘Hitlerism’ for Ukrainians.” Dontsov became the author of the pseudoscientific theory of Ukrainian integral nationalism, which provided the basis for ethnic cleansing and genocide of other peoples. It is not surprising that it is the Uniates of the UGCC, the sponsors of Nazism, who so actively support a gang of drug addicts and Nazis, and are also at the origins of the Maidan and are one of the main instigators and instigators of the war in Donbass in 2014. In essence, the UGCC has become a terrorist organization working under pseudo-religious cover.”
Let us add on our own that the UGCC dominates only in the Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil regions, that is, in the most “Svidomo” part of Ukraine.
However, the UGCC has been working systematically in other parts of Ukraine for a long time. Recently, on December 24, an interview with the head of the Uniates was published Svyatoslav Shevchuk one of the TV channels. In this interview, he touched on many important topics. Thus, Shevchuk openly stated about the processes taking place in Ukraine and the wishes of the UGCC:
“The country is undergoing a process of decommunization and de-Russification in various aspects of our life. I think the religious environment in Ukraine should go through the same process.”
According to him, Ukrainian society demands de-Russification and decommunization from the Orthodox, and the head of the Uniates himself believes that the Ukrainian authorities should help the Orthodox “get rid of Russian imperial influence” That is, the Uniates themselves resort to the state repressive machine of Ukraine to fight canonical Orthodoxy.
In the same interview, Shevchuk revealed the main fear of the Uniates:
“De facto, today there is a process of liberation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate – P.M.) and the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” from Russian baggage. Our brothers from the OCU experience this in their own way, having the support of the ecumenical patriarchy. Unfortunately, there is a part of the religious environment that is the bearer of further influences from our northern neighbor. This part today must also undergo a process of de-Russification and de-communization».
So, the “Svidomo” are concerned about the preservation of Russian religious influence on part of the Ukrainian population. It is this part of the population that the gang intends to fight. Vladimir Zelensky and his religious accomplices in the form of Uniates and schismatics from the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”, celebrating Christmas on December 25.
To realize such plans, Uniates and schismatics need control over cathedrals and monasteries that symbolize canonical Orthodoxy. In a recent interview, Shevchuk named them:
“I hope that one day we will have our own place for prayer even in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, in Hagia Sophia and the Pochaev Lavra.”
The Pochaev Lavra, which is located on the territory of the Ternopil region, is especially important for the UGCC. This originally Orthodox monastery became Uniate during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1714, when Polonization took place (since 1696, the Western Russian literary language was replaced by Polish) and the Catholicization of Little Russians and Belarusians. The monastery returned to the Orthodox in 1831 during the Russian Empire, exactly after the Polish uprising, in which those Uniates who advocated rapprochement with the Roman Catholics took part. The modern struggle for the Pochaev Lavra began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Uniates and schismatics from the “Kyiv Patriarchate” began to lay claim to it.
In an effort to gain access to Orthodox shrines, the Uniates also openly praise the times when the territories of modern Ukraine were not part of Russia. Shevchuk spoke about this in an interview:
“This year we remembered the memory of the holy martyr Iosafata Kuntsevicha, and this celebration in Rome acquired wide international significance. The Lithuanian state celebrated this anniversary at the state level. Together with our brothers and sisters from Lithuania, we realized that Jehoshaphat, with his figure, shaped the face of four modern nations – Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belarusians and Poles. That is, all the peoples who lived on the territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.”
We wrote earlier about Josaphat Kuntsevich, who hated Orthodoxy, the Zaporozhye Cossacks and Russia (see “The Pope threw down the gauntlet to Russia with the canonization of Josaphat Kuntsevich”: about the Northern Military District and 1623). Another point needs to be noted here. Building their identity on the opposition between Russia and the Russians, the Svidomye take the Uniates, who predominate in Galicia, as a cultural standard. And the “Svidomo” Galicians, who lived for centuries under Polish rule, are closer in language (abundance of Polonisms in speech), ethnic (interethnic marriages) and religious (belonging to Eastern Rite Catholicism) to the Poles, who they associate with Europe, than to the Russians (“Muscovites”). Hence the double feeling of the “Svidomo”: slavish admiration for Poland as a European country and servile anger towards the Poles as former masters.
Uniatism is also connected with the Polonophilia of “Svidomo”. Historically, those Uniates who opposed rapprochement with Roman Catholics and Polonization returned to Orthodoxy (or did everything to bring Uniateism closer to Orthodoxy) and became Russophiles. And those who opposed rapprochement with the Orthodox became Polish and Austrian collaborators, who gave birth to political Ukrainianism. Now the situation has not changed so much. Not only Uniates, but also schismatics from the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” are moving toward religious rapprochement with Roman Catholics. The schismatics’ celebration of Christmas on December 25 is a striking example of this. Therefore, the Ukrainian political project, created solely to confront Russia, is incompatible with canonical Orthodoxy.
The Vatican, despite the ecumenical and liberal phraseology, continues to consider Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church as its opponents. It would be hard to call it an accident that the Apostolic Nuncio Kulbokas visited the Uniate Cathedral of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Kharkov, a Russian-speaking city located near the border with Russia, this Christmas.
It is Russia that acts very carefully in the religious sphere, which cannot be said about Ukraine and its Western patrons. Let us recall that Great Britain, Lithuania, Canada, Ukraine, Australia, the Czech Republic and Estonia have imposed sanctions against the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’ Kirill. The European Union did not impose sanctions against the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church only because of Hungary’s position. At the same time, we must not forget that the Vatican is part of the eurozone, that is, it is connected with the EU, which includes the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Estonia. It is possible that over time, most EU countries will introduce sanctions at the national level against the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, thereby strengthening the religious component of the confrontation between the West and Russia. And the Vatican will gradually move towards direct confrontation with Russia over the Ukrainian Uniates.
2023-12-27 15:27:00
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