UGCC Patriarch conferred Honorable Distinctions of the Holy Martyr Omelian Kovch in Dnipro’s famous hospital

On November 30, Patriarch of the UGCC Sviatoslav (Shevchuk) visited the ATO soldiers who stay at the regional Mechnikov clinical hospital of Dnipro. The hierarch thanked the volunteers, doctors, soldiers, public figures for their sacrificial work and conferred on them the honorable distinctions of the Holy Martyr Omelian Kovch, the Information Department of the UGCC reported.

“We came here to this famous hospital, because there a special place and space where you serve and save the lives of our heroes, see the blood, suffering, tears,” the patriarch said.

The patriarch told the soldiers about the blessed Omelian Kovch and noted that this saint is a good example to follow.

“Today we seek to present to winners this year's award named after the priest of our church, whom we can call the “God-seer.” He was an ordinary Greek Catholic priest in Peremyshlyany. He had many children and was well aware of what it meant to bring up good-natured people. But when the war broke out, God has set him new pastoral objectives. At the time of the Holocaust, when he saw his friends and neighbors being taken away to imminent death, he began to do everything to rescue the sons and daughters of the Jewish people. For that he was killed in the concentration camp in Majdanek,” the UGCC patriarch said.

Note that this year’s honorable distinction winners are: ICF “Everyone can,” Dnipro Regional Clinical Hospital named after Mechnikov, Adam Michnik, Polish social-political activist, journalist, publisher, dissident and political prisoner of the former People’s Republic of Poland, Igor Lukyanets, senior soldier of the Armed forces of Ukraine, Volodymyr Gera, Lieutenant of the Armed forces of Ukraine.