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Ukrainian Catholics to attend beatification of Pope John Paul II in Vatican

11.04.2011, 15:56

Dozens of Ukrainian pilgrims intend to participate in the events connected with the beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1-2 in the Vatican. The pilgrimage is a chance for participants to learning more about the outstanding pope and experiencing unity with the whole Catholic Church during the beatification.

Dozens of Ukrainian pilgrims intend to participate in the events connected with the beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1-2 in the Vatican. The pilgrimage is a chance for participants to learning more about the outstanding pope and experiencing unity with the whole  Catholic Church during the beatification.

“John Paul II is an outstanding figure not only for Catholics but for all Christians and the whole world. It is, undoubtedly, an event which we, as the faithful of the Catholic Church in Ukraine, could not stay away from,” the head of the Rafail Pilgrimage and Retreat Center of the Studite Monastery of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Andrii Delisandru, told RISU in an interview.

Pilgrims from Odesa, Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Novohrad-Volynskyi, most of whom are Roman and Greek Catholics, are going to visit the Vatican together with the Rafail Center. The group will be pastored by a Roman Catholic priest from Odesa.

“The people intending to participate in the pilgrimage include some who have had a personal meeting with John Paul II. It might be only a few minutes but during that short time they experienced so much that they would be ready to pay any amount of money to have the chance to meet again with their favorite pope during his beatification,” added the deputy head of the pilgrimage center, Vasyl Mikula.

The most important thing which the Ukrainian pilgrims can experience during the pilgrimage is the Universality of the Catholic Church, stressed the theologian Andrii Delisandru. “It is a wonderful opportunity to attend a gathering of one and a half to two million Catholics and to realize that we in Ukraine are only one of the local churches of the world. In order to experience that one should be in the presence of a great number of people gathered for one religious purpose.”

The pilgrimage program includes deeper familiarization with the figure of John Paul II, his life, as well as with his predecessor Johh XXIII who paved the way for his outstanding successor. On their way to the Vatican, Ukrainians will be able to visit places connected with the life and ministry of Karol Wojtyla: Krakow where he attended a seminary and served as the Metropolitan of Krakow, and the heart of the Catholic Poland, Czestochowa, which was quite often visited by John Paul as the pope.  

“The participants of the pilgrimage understand well that they will not be able to see all the outstanding places that we usually visit during our continual regular pilgrimages to Italy. The motivation of these people is the figure of John Paul II as well as the spiritual need to experience unity with the whole Catholic Church during the beatification and not just the desire to see Rome or Italy.”

Not all interested Ukrainians are able to participate in the pilgrimage. As soon as the date of beatification was announced, all the hotels in Rome and Italy raised the prices. And it is difficult to book enough rooms even at the raised prices as a fever has started in the world with regard to the beatification.

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