Pope and Ukrainian Patriarch meet

This morning Pope Leo XIV met with His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, major archbishop of Kyiv-Halyč, Ukraine. Is wasting no time getting down to work by having meetings with visiting bishops and others. This is the key way a pope gets to know those collaborating with him in ministry.

On May 14, the Pope met with the participants from the Eastern Churches in Rome for the Jubilee for Eastern Churches –the Holy Year. Various heads of the Sui Iuris Churches are in Rome for prayer, fraternity and meetings. Here’s Leo’s address. It is an excellent address and difficult to pull out just one paragraph for consideration. But perhaps this one –in addition to the one given in the image above– gives a sense of how Eastern Christianity is crucial in the overall picture of Catholicism:

“Your traditions of spirituality, ancient yet ever new, are medicinal. In them, the drama of human misery is combined with wonder at God’s mercy, so that our sinfulness does not lead to despair, but opens us to accepting the gracious gift of becoming creatures who are healed, divinized and raised to the heights of heaven. For this, we ought to give endless praise and thanks to the Lord. Together, we can pray with Saint Ephrem the Syrian and say to the Lord Jesus: “Glory to you, who laid your cross as a bridge over death… Glory to you who clothed yourself in the body of mortal man, and made it the source of life for all mortals” (Homily on our Lord, 9). We must ask, then, for the grace to see the certainty of Easter n every trial of life and not to lose heart, remembering, as another great Eastern Father wrote, that “the greatest sin is not to believe in the power of the Resurrection” (SAINT ISAAC OF NINEVEH, Sermones ascetici, I, 5).”

Patriarch Sviatoslav in DC

The chapter of the UGCC with the Permanent Synod and the bishops of the Philadelphia Metropolis held a number of meetings at the Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States and the Congress.

Photo by : o. Taras Zheplinsky

The Patriarch in Rome

The Divine Liturgy served by Patriarch Sviatoslav, the Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Galicia, here at the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome.

Sviatoslav celebrates birthday

Happy 53rd Birthday Your Beatitude, Patriarch Sviatoslav. May God grant you many more blessed years!

Многая і Благая Літа Блаженніший Святослаaв!

Are we moving to a common date for Christmas and Easter?

Metropolitan Sviatoslav and Metropolitan Epiphany met to exchange with each other Christmas greetings and to discuss matters of ecclesial life of mutual importance. The Church leaders paid special attention to the agreement on the reform of the church liturgical calendar, which is increasingly critical before Christmas and Easter holy days. After the discussion, it was proposed to create a joint working group that will take a comprehensive study of the issue. This working group would have to draw up specific proposals for the Presidents and Synods of both Churches in the context of preparations to mark the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Cathedral, held at Nicea in AD 325.

Pray for the work on the liturgical calendar and the move toward a common date of Christmas and Easter.