In an interview with the Polish Catholic weekly "Niedziela," Metropolitan Archbishop of Lviv of the Roman Catholic Church Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki said that the Ukrainian people should admit their guilt in the “genocide of the Poles” and get cleansed of this sin because it is associated with the war in the East Ukraine. This was reported by Ukrayinska Pravda.
The question of whether a prayer can bring in the future the long-awaited peace and tranquility to Ukraine, Archbishop Mokrzycki said that the war should be seen in the spiritual perspective - Ukrainian youths are dying there or returned handicapped.
“Ukraine should think about why this happens. God is not a God who punishes his people, his children but makes us aware reminding our right to love another person. I think that this special response should appear now, in the year the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Fatima, who said that communism was the punishment for the sins of turning away from God, and at the same time called for repayment, redemption, and supplication to the Lord. The Ukrainian people are still bearing the sin of genocide, which is still difficult to admit and which is difficult to purify although there were several attempts to do so: among the others, in the 70th anniversary of the events on Volyn,” says Metropolitan Mokrzycki (translated by Roman Kabachiya).
the metropolitan is convinced that as long as Ukrainians do not recognize their guilt and do not purify this sin, they will not have a blessing.
According to him, Ukrainian Poles need to apologize for this great sin of genocide.
“In this context, let us pray for the conversion of Russia so it respected the other nations,” Metropolitan Mokrzycki adds.
Under the "genocide of the Poles" Mokrzycki obviously implied the Volyn tragedy, on the perception of which Ukrainian and Polish parties never reached consent.
The Volyn tragedy in Poland is called a massacre, "Rzeź wołyńska". It is about cleansing the Ukrainian and Polish population by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Polish Army with Polish battalions of Schutzmannschaft and Soviet partisans during the Second World War in Volyn.
The conflict through interpretation of the Volyn tragedy emerged this fall when in Kyiv the day before the official presentation, the Foreign Ministry asked to cancel the screening of "Volyn" movie which tells the story of 1943.
Doctor of Philosophy Oleksiy Panich commented for “Ukrayinsla Pravda, Zhyttia” that “Volyn” can be considered a film that inciting ethnic hatred if we do not watch it with the critical eye but in the mode of emotional involvement in the events unfolding on the screen.
Later it became known that the movie "Volyn" won the most awards during the presentation of the annual award of the Polish Academy “Orly-2017”