Patriarch Sviatoslav: Church Needs Treatment After Election

During a meetingon on November 9 between the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Patriarch Sviatoslav, and the Canadian Ambassador to Ukraine, Troy Lulashnyk, and Gregory Lemermeyer, Counsellor at the Embassy of Canada in Kyiv, the participants touched upon the subject of the parliamentary elections in Ukraine. Patriarch Sviatoslav expressed his gratitude for the large number of observers from Canada.

The hierarch told the participants about the political situation after the election and the election process itself.

“The churches, which kept its distance from the political battles, are concerned over efforts of various candidates to use the churches and religious organizations for political purposes. We had to deal with large-scale political bribery, including that of priests. We were not familiar with these methods in the past. Our church emerged from the process wounded and needs treatment because when the church is used for political purposes, the credibility of its words is undermined and the notion of the church s distorted,” said the head of UGCC, the Information Department of UGCC reported.