Reps of United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Visit Ukrainian Catholics

“We hope that the visit of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will help our brothers from the United States to get to know the church’s state of development our and the challenges facing it and the Ukrainian society,” Bishop Bohdan (Dziurakh), Secretary of the Synod of Bishops, said the beginning of the USCCB visit to Ukraine.

Bishop Blase Cupich, Bishop of Spokane (WA, USA), Member Subcommittee Aid to the Church in Eastern Europe AJC, and Dr. Declan Murphy, associate director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Office of National Collections and director of the Collection for Aid to the Church in Central and Eastern Europe, will visit Ukraine for 12 days.

The American bishops visit Ukraine, in particular the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, as part of a wider visit to Central and Eastern Europe. The visit will consist of two parts: first they will visit Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Odessa; and then Lviv, Stry, Uzhhorod, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Kolomyia.

According to Bishop Bohdan, in Ukraine the guests will become familiar with the state of the development of the Catholic Church of the Latin and Eastern Rites.

The visit began in Kyiv on October 18 with a meeting with Patriarch Sviatoslav. On October 19, the guests will meet with members of the office of the Kyiv Archeparchy of the UGCC, and then the Patriarchal Curia of the UGCC. On the same day they will visit the UGCC Patriarchal Center.

“From our side this visit will give us an opportunity to personally thank the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and all U.S. Catholics for their solidarity with our church, which was persecuted for decades. Today, their fraternal support for our pastoral efforts is very valuable, because we can realize many pastoral projects and reestablish our structure in Ukraine,” said the Secretary of the Synod of Bishops, reported the Information Department of the UGCC.