On September 23, 2017, the third congress of laymen of the Kyiv-Halych Metropolitanate of the UGCC took place in the monastery of St. Basil the Great in Kyiv. The topic of this year's Congress is "The Strategy of the Metropolitan Development: WHAT we do, HOW we do it, together with whom we are doing it", the UGCC website reports.

The event was attended by representatives of the clergy and laymen of the Kyiv Archeparchy and Donetsk, Odessa, Lutsk, Kharkiv and Crimean exarchates of the UGCC, as well as representatives of various lay organizations, communities and movements operating in the Kyiv-Halych Metropolitanate.

After the liturgy, the meeting was opened by the head of the UGCC, Patriarch Sviatoslav. The First Hierarch drew attention to the importance of holding such an event. As the Primate of the UGCC noted, such meetings are necessary for the better future and wellbeing of the Church.

Patriarch Svyatoslav believes that for the Greek Catholics it is important today to understand how to build up the Church together. “Therefore, the topic that we made the name of this Congress sounds strategically. We want to start dreaming what we want to see our Church like in these areas for five or ten years. For it depends a lot what we will be working on,” said the head of the Church.

According to him, our primary and most important strategic task is that every faithful of the Church, everyone who is baptized in the UGCC, lives a full, deep, Christian life. That is, this is the task is to enchurch people who are scattered in these vast territories. "We know that only in Kyiv, there are about two hundred thousand people who are baptized in our Church. My question is: where are they? We know that hundreds of faithful live in villages and towns in all our exarchates, but we have not yet reached all of them, but this is our immediate pastoral task - to be where our people are,” says Svyatoslav.

Our next step, the head of the Church said, that we must do is to share faith in God with those people who have not yet known him.

At the same time, he stressed that care should be taken to educate those whom God through the UGCC wants to trust in preaching the gospel of Christ. “I think,” said the head of state, “above all, we, the hierarchs, must educate ourselves. We must constantly care for our growth, learn to preach the Word of God in various new ways in a new different way, so that the bishop is not a stranger to his faithful. We must also take care of the constant growth, formation of our clergy. Today it does not work preaching the gospel as five years ago. Today, when a priest wants to know what people are thinking and where young people are gathering, they probably have to use Facebook, follow the topics they are discussing, and give them answers from the point of Christ's Gospel. That is, the ways of communicating today are different than they were several years ago.”

According to the head of the UGCC, the Church today also needs Catechists. “The Synod of Bishops has made the following decision: if during the parish visit the bishop sees that there the parish has everything: a temple with golden baths, huge rooms, but no catechesis, no teaching of the Christian faith, then he has the duty to recognize the pastoral ministry of such a priest unsatisfactory. And you, the laity, should demand from their priests that in any community there should be at least a catechetical program, nothing to say about a catechetical school,” said Patriarch Svyatoslav at the end.

Later the participants were acquainted with representatives of the dioceses and exarchates. After that, a number of important questions about the life of the Church and the secular communities were discussed. In particular, they talked about the actual tasks facing the Church and how they were implemented.

Representatives of various communities came to the conclusion that it was more important than ever to care for the upbringing of children and young people who are the future of the Church and the people. In addition, tasks were set for pastors, whose daily duty is to be good shepherds.