This year marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Ukraine and the Vatican
According to the Ambassador, his main task is to confirm that on the one hand, Ukraine really needs a word of support and understanding from the Apostolic capital, and on the other hand, Ukraine must show that the Apostolic capital itself, building a whole system of its relations with the whole world, and in particular with Eastern Europe, cannot create this perfect system without Ukraine.
"For more than two years, Ukraine has not been represented in the Vatican at the level of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. For the past year, the Vatican has not had its own nuncio to Ukraine. He only arrived last fall. Autumn 2021 was a kind of a bridgehead and starting point, from which, if not a new era, then at least a new page of relations between Ukraine and the Vatican was launched. Ukraine has received an extremely powerful, motivated and very informal Nuncio — Visvaldas Kulbokas, who wants, works and tries to show absolutely by all his actions that he is a person who happened to be in our state not by chance. In these coming months, he established relationships with all the players, which accelerated relations with the Apostolic capital.
In response, Ukraine intensified the search for its ambassador to the Vatican," Andriy Yurash said.
He outlined the history of diplomatic relations between Ukraine and the Vatican since 1919.
"Even during the existence of the Ukrainian people's Republic, diplomatic relations were established, which showed that the Apostolic capital already at that time understood the need of a newly formed political unit of an independent Ukrainian state. The circumstances were different then. At that time, the Vatican did not yet exist in its current status. The ambassador from Ukraine to the Apostolic capital at that time was Count Mykhailo Tyshkevich, a very famous figure.
Many people say that the tragedy of the then Ukrainian Ambassador to the Vatican was that, unfortunately, under pressure from our northern neighbors, Ukrainian statehood was not preserved, and therefore the Ukrainian representative in the Vatican lost the political base on which he was located. That is, it has lost its formal legitimacy due to the political processes in our state.
Today, we cannot allow this in any case, we must take into account all the moments, both during the UPR period and after 1992, when diplomatic relations were established and established.
Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary of state for relations with other states of the Apostolic capital, plans to arrive in Ukraine to talk about the current state of our relations. De facto, this visit will be the first real step in preparing for the papal visit that Ukraine expects in the near future," said Andriy Yurash.
