On February 12-13, 2025, Munich hosted an international symposium, “Security in Europe: Religious Dimensions of War and Moral Responsibility for Peace”, which brought together leading scholars to discuss the religious, moral and ethical dimensions of countering global Russian aggression and rethinking security challenges in Europe and the world. This event was held for the second time. This time it was held as part of the Munich Security Conference.
This was reported by the UGCC Department for Information.
The symposium began with a prayer for peace, led by Bishop Bohdan Dziurakh, Apostolic Exarch for Ukrainians of the Byzantine rite in Germany and Scandinavia. In his speech, he spoke about the importance of truth and justice regarding Russia's aggression against the Ukrainian people.
“We all need the full truth about the crimes of the Russian occupation regime, about all those who prepared, carried out, justified and, unfortunately, blessed this genocide against Ukrainians. We must recognize and make public the truth about the causes of this war, both those that lie in the depths of decades and centuries and those that have become openly visible since Russia once again became a dictatorship before the eyes of the whole world,” said the bishop.
Panel discussions at the conference focused on the moral and religious dimensions of Russia's attack on the international order. The participants discussed such topics as identity conflicts, the use of religion in war propaganda, in particular, the instrumentalization of the Russian Orthodox Church, the ideological justification of military aggression, the moral and legal responsibility of church leaders, the search for ways to stop the bloodshed, and the ethical foundations for restoring sustainable peace in Europe.
The symposium aimed to integrate the perspectives of theology, religious studies, social ethics, moral philosophy, and related disciplines into the broader security discourse, highlighting their contribution to finding an adequate response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The speakers at the symposium were scholars from the three organizing universities, as well as representatives of other institutions and communities. They are experts from different countries (Ukraine, Germany, the United States, Austria, Georgia, Italy, Lithuania, Poland) and fields of study - theology, diplomacy, law, history, philosophy, political science, sociology, and others.
Among the speakers were: Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference; Yuriy Nikitiuk, Consul General of Ukraine in Munich; Markus Vogt, German Catholic theologian and Professor of Social and Public Ethics at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich; Oleksandra Matviychuk, Ukrainian human rights activist, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize 2022; Clemens Sedmak, Director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame; Fr. Thomas Schwarz, Head of the Catholic Church charity organization Renovabis in Germany; Martin Schulze Wessel, researcher of the history of Central and Eastern Europe; José Casanova, Spanish and American sociologist of religion, professor of sociology at Georgetown University; Fr. Yuriy Avvakumov, Professor of the History of Theology at the Catholic University of Notre Dame in the United States; Irena Vaishviliaitė, Professor at Vilnius University; Jan Tombinski, Ambassador of Poland to Germany; Martin Jaeger, Ambassador of Germany to Ukraine, and others.
One of the organizers of the symposium is UCU, which was represented by: Bishop Borys Gudziak, Metropolitan of Philadelphia, President of UCU; Rector Taras Dobko; Oleh Turiy, Vice-Rector for Strategic Cooperation, Director of the Institute of Church History; Volodymyr Turchynovskyy, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of UCU; Myroslav Marynovych, dissident, human rights activist, advisor to the rector; Oksana Kulakovska, head of the UCU Analytical Center in Kyiv; Yuriy Pidlisnyi, head of the Ethics-Politics-Economics program; Andriy Kostiuk, senator and lecturer at the UCU Department of Philosophy and UCU Business School.