Greetings of his Beatitude Cardinal Lubomyr Husar to his Holiness Pope John Paul II at the meeting with the Ukrainian Council of churches and religious organizations
The Philharmonic, Sunday June 24, 2001
Most Holy Father,
It is my great honor, as the current Chairman of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, to welcome you among us.
Allow me first of all to say a few words about who we are. Present here are the heads of the 16 largest churches and religious organizations in Ukraine. Together we make up this Council, which includes Christians - Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant - as well as Jews and Muslims. In addition, there are 60 smaller religious organizations in Ukraine, many of them established only recently. The Ukrainian law "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations," ensures for every confession complete freedom of expression, a law that has been greatly appreciated in the international community.
Our Council is a very recent organization, having been created only a few years ago. It has been established to provide a forum for encounters, for the discussion of common problems, and to present common concerns to the government. The Council also takes measures to ensure that the religious organizations live together in peace and avoid all conflicts in their relations. In this spirit several declarations have already been signed which, in our opinion, have had a positive impact on religious relations in Ukraine. The potential of an organization such as our Council has by no means been exhausted.
What challenges do we face? In my opinion, the first is presented by the existence of a true multiconfessional reality in Ukraine. In the past, some churches enjoyed a privileged status in those states that governed Ukrainian territory. Others, on the contrary, were declared illegal. Today all the churches and religious organizations enjoy the same rights and are equal before the law. This is a great achievement of the Ukrainian state, even if some things remain to be done. In particular, the churches and religious communities that were persecuted, repressed and exiled from society during the time of the communist dictatorship await from the state full juridical rehabilitation and the recognition of their educational institutions and other structures that serve society. For our part, the new circumstances of coexistence of the religious communities compel us to explore more deeply the sources of peace and tolerance that are found within our own religious traditions, and to give them expression in our actions and in our relationships.
Secondly, we have to live in a society where the residue of communist order and ideology has not been completely forgotten or removed from the conscience of ordinary people. A high percentage of the inhabitants of Ukraine do not belong to any church or religious organization, and often they are far from God. This situation requires us to work for a renewal of the religious dimension of human life.
Thirdly, even though Ukraine has a thousand-year-long religious tradition (mostly Christian), private and public life in our country in many cases is not based on the universal human values that have always had a religious foundation. Naturally, this difficulty is not ours alone, but pertains to all the former communist countries and, more generally, to post-modern society. The great challenges that our society faces will be impossible to resolve without the strength of our common moral values, without the development of a broad ethical and religious program, and without theological academic education.
Fourthly, another considerable problem that weighs heavily on Ukrainian religious life, is the lack of unity in the Church of Christ of the Kyjivan tradition. Our dream is the restoration of the communion that was once ours, and we are grateful to the world Christian communion for its understanding of the importance of this problem for Ukraine.
In ancient monastic literature we read that when a spiritual master appeared among the monks, they asked him, "give us a word, share your experience with us." In the same way we ask you to sustain us in our efforts. "Give us a word," Holy Father!
24.06.2001 (21:41) // Religious Information Service of Ukraine
24. juni 2001