"No one has more love than someone who would lay down his soul for his friends" (John 15:13). Metropolitan Borys Gudziak of Philadelphia of the UGCC began his Facebook post on the day of honoring the memory of the heroes of the Heavenly Hundred.
"I encourage all, first of all, journalists, to revisit the lives of these martyrs who gave their lives for your and my dignity, for our freedom.
I encourage all communities to send our heroes together and numerically to eternity. It is we who need their funeral to face the truth for which they gave their lives. May their testimony, death and eternal life be for us a source of understanding of the truth and another conversion to our dignity." Metropolitan Borys called on February 21.
On the same day, in the main church of the UGCC in Philadelphia, the Metropolitan led the Liturgy with a prayer for the newest heroes of Ukraine.
In his speech, he spoke about the death on the Maidan of a UCU teacher, a young historian Bohdan Solchanyk.
"I think many of us knew one of those heroes of the Heavenly Hundred who gave their lives for freedom and dignity. One of the teachers of UCU, a young historian, 28-year-old Bohdan Solchanyk, was killed on February 18 by a sniper's bullet that hit him right in the heart. I was in Kyiv, and I have to testify that it was terrible and scary, but it was a deep mystery: they gave their lives for eternal values, for the dignity of every Ukrainian. It changed history. It was our Easter. It was a deliberate sacrifice. They knew the danger. Bohdan Solchanyk carried already one wounded or killed and then returned again to Institutska, got back in the snipers' field of view. He took a bullet and spilled his blood. He gave his life for each of us as a savior. He was one of those ordinary people who gave their lives on the Maidan and who are now giving their lives at the front," Bishop Boris summed up.