Patriarch Sviatoslav passes to pope greetings from all Ukranian churches and religious organizations

Patriarch Sviatoslav passed to the Most Holy Father greetings from our Church and also from the Orthodox who attended the enthronement in Kyiv. Primarily, he named the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations as the sender of the greetings.

"Patriarch Sviatoslav passed to the Most Holy Father greetings from our Church and also from the Orthodox who attended the enthronement in Kyiv. Primarily, he named the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations as the sender of the greetings. The second statement of the Head of UGCC was that the present visit is an expression of full co-communion with the successor of the Supreme Apostle Peter. Many our martyrs, bishops, priests, monks and nuns laid their lives for this co-communion," said the Secretary of the Synod of Bishops of UGCC in a commentary to the Information Department, Bishop Bohdan Dziurakh.

On March 30, during a general audience, Pope Benedict personally met with the head of the UGCC, Patriarch Sviatoslav. "Your beatitude, the Lord has called You to the service and leadership in this distinguished Church, a part of the nation which was baptized in Kyiv over a thousand years ago. I am sure that You will be enlightened by the action of the Holy Spirit and will lead the Church guiding it with faith in Jesus Christ according to your own tradition and spirituality in communion with Peter's Capital which is the visible knot of that unity for which numerous sons and daughters did not spare even their own lives," stressed Pope Benedict XVI as he addressed the new head of the UGCC.