Anniversary of the Lviv Pseudo Council must become a point of national memory recuperation
The 70th anniversary of the liquidation of the UGCC should teach Ukrainians a lesson with a view of the national memory recuperation, in order that we became freer, stronger, being aware of this truth. This was stated by Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Patriarch Sviatoslav, during the opening of the International scientific conference “The power of faith against abuse of power: the Greek Catholics of Central and Eastern Europe in the context of persecution by totalitarian regimes after World War II” at Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University.
According to him, living through this anniversary, we wanted not only to commemorate the victims of this tragic event in a religious way, but we really wanted to have an opportunity of deep intellectual grasp of what happened.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav stressed the importance of particularly the scientific understanding. “For centuries, said the Primate, “the churches, our Church and the Orthodox Church elaborated a specific type of literature, which became known as the polemical literature. The literature, which, on the one hand, protected a particular denomination and on the other hand, opposed another one. Yet another type of literature was created regarding the events of 1946, which might be called apologetic or polemical literature. I think the time of polemics between the Churches in Ukraine should come to an end! Remembering this anniversary, we would like in this time, which is difficult for Ukraine and for our church, to begin, perhaps, a new stage, a new way to approach the analysis and interpretation of historical events. And here we need very serious scientific work and historical research.”
Jesus said: Know the truth and the truth will make you free. According to the head of the UGCC, so we now know the truth about the events that we call Lviv Pseudo Council, we urgently need the scientific methodology in order to comprehend the objective truth in the scientific way. “Therefore we are in need of genuine scientific historiography, not a polemic or confessional literature and propaganda,” the patriarch said.
He expressed his deep gratitude to all historians who were studying ecclesiastical history. After all, he said, for many years there was no genuine historical science in the former Soviet Union. Only now it starts to get on its feet.
In particular, the Head of Church distinguished the work of the Institute of National Remembrance, the workers of which painstakingly glean the required elements of the genuine historical memory of our people. “I think the historical memory of the Churches of Ukraine is an integral part of the national memory,” the patriarch said.
The Primate thanked the scholars who attended the conference, especially those who are not members of the UGCC, but were in attendance: “In particular, to Archbishop Ihor (Isichenko), a scholar who is now here. And all the brothers and sisters from the Orthodox Church who have the courage to know the truth about Lviv Pseudo Council based on modern methodology.”
The patriarch said that the Church really would like that the anniversary of these tragic events served all the time as a point of recuperation for the Ukrainian national memory. “We will become freer, stronger being aware of this truth. We want to know this truth, not in order to reproach someone or try to fight against someone. No. We want to reorganize our memory so that we were not its hostages. We want to keep our memories in order to prevent such things and thus to seek the true church unity in Ukraine,” said the patriarch.
“May the Holy Spirit,” wished the spiritual leader of the Greek Catholics, “make your conscience of a scholar clear so that you objectively show all the things that you see in the scientific research, whatever uncomfortable they might be for Greek Catholics or Orthodox. And then this truth will really make us free. It was reported by the Information Department of the UGCC.
