As Pope Francis noted earlier, the pre-pandemic world no longer exists. And now it is our responsibility to build a new civilization, a new and better world. It is very important that we become better ourselves. And we have a unique chance for this right now. Welcome to the new world!
This opinion was expressed by His Beatitude Sviatoslav, Father and Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, in the final program "Open Church" on "Zhyve Television," which was livestreamed on December 16. Well-known Ukrainian journalists spoke with the Head of the UGCC: Sonia Koshkina, Inna Kuznetsova, Vitaliy Portnikov, Saken Aimurzayev, as well as viewers who joined the meeting through zoom.
Summing up the results of the past year, the Primate noted that 2020 was a "crazy year." "We had to learn to work, live, pray, even perform acts of charity in a different way than usual," he said.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav said that a few days ago he heard an interesting thought. During a lecture on the existentialism of the twentieth century, one of the philosophers came to the conclusion that the twentieth century began "with the guns of the First World War." That is, the century began with an event that shook all mankind.
“Listening to this, I asked myself: when did the third millennium begin? I think we can draw some analogies here. In my opinion, 2020 is a marker of a new period in human history. This pandemic affected all the inhabitants of the globe for the first time in modern times. It has attracted the attention of all mankind, there have been some tectonic shifts in the civilization of the modern world,” said the Head of the UGCC.
According to him, when we hear about a pandemic, we focus mostly on medical and epidemiological aspects, but we already see that there are serious socio-economic consequences. "They are already talking about the danger of a recession in the world economy, perhaps even worse than the economic depression of the early twentieth century… We already see that there will be some political changes. We see how the pandemic affected the US presidential election ... I think we have not yet fully understood all the consequences of the pandemic that accompanied us throughout the past year,” said His Beatitude Sviatoslav.