Ukrainian writer and diplomat Yuriy Shcherbak, poet Dmytro Pavlychko, journalist Yuriy Doroshenko and dissident Bohdan Horyn called on Ukrainians to come to a joint prayer that will take place on St Sofia Square in the center of Kyiv on December 15.
Ukrainian writer and diplomat Yuriy Shcherbak, poet Dmytro Pavlychko, journalist Yuriy Doroshenko and dissident Bohdan Horyn called on Ukrainians to come to a joint prayer that will take place on St Sofia Square in the center of Kyiv on December 15.
“We call upon all those who care about the fate of their native Church, who are willing to finally break the chains of imperial Moscow Orthodoxy to arrive at 9.00 am on December 15, 2018 at Sofia Square, near the ancient walls inside which the Unification Council will take place,” goes the text of their joint appeal published on the page of the public organization “Tomos 2018” on Facebook on Sunday.
The authors of the appeal call the day where the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew grants the Tomos of autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as “the day of the historic triumph of Ukraine,” and noted that it “restores justice and gives the God-bestowed right to create a canonical autocephalous assembly of the Orthodox Ukrainian Church.”
“We believe that our people's prayer will become one with the prayer of the Ukrainian bishops to support the holy cause of obtaining independence by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
We believe that the Holy Theotokos and the Guardian of Ukraine will hear our prayer and bless our land and nation with a free and peaceful life,” the statement says. This was reported by Interfax-Ukraine.