On Thursday, November 24, retreats of bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine ended in Lviv-Bryukhovichi. At the end of the joint spiritual exercises, the bishops held a fraternal meeting.
"Such recollections are an opportunity to restore the spirit. Here we meditate, pray, and remain silent. These are spiritual exercises that encourage you to dwell on your personal spiritual life, and think about where it is going, what you should get rid of, and how. This year we talked about peace in the life of St. Francis of Assisi," said Bishop Ihor Voznyak, Archbishop and Metropolitan of Lviv, Department of Information of the UGCC, about his participation in spiritual exercises.
The end of the retreats was a joint Holy Mass, which was led by the ordinary of the Diocese of Kyiv-Zhytomyr, Bishop Vitaly Krivitsky, in the retreat House of St. James Strepa of the Archdiocese of Lviv in Bryukhovichi.
The bishops met with the Apostolic Nuncio to Ukraine, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas. In his speech, he paid attention to the Holy See's help to Ukraine, which is suffering from war: "Pope Francis mentions Ukraine during every speech. The Vatican constantly provides humanitarian assistance and promotes prisoners' release in every possible way. From the beginning of the full-scale invasion until September, the Vatican's Bambino Gesu hospital took 1,600 children under its care," the nuncio said.
During the meeting, the bishops discussed the situation in Ukraine and the challenges facing the Church at that time. Bishop Theodor Martyniuk, assistant bishop of the UGCC Archdiocese of Ternopil-Zboriv, presented a number of updates to the rules concerning the protection of minors in light of the Vatican's new instructions. Bishop Oleksandr Yazlovetsky, assistant bishop of the RCC Diocese of Kyiv-Zhytomyr in Ukraine, presented the next stages of the Synodal process, which is reaching the continental level.
The meeting was attended by Magda Kaczmarek from the Organization "Help the Church in Need" and the director of the organization's representative office in Wroclaw, Fr. Andrzej Paz. The meeting became a platform for discussing issues of helping the church and the Ukrainian people during the war, supporting displaced persons in winter, challenges related to the energy crisis, and so on.