Chancellor of the Odesa-Crimean Exarchate of UGCC: We Are Not Guests in Odesa

The Chancellor of the Odesa-Crimean Exarchate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) Fr. Volodymyr Zhdan stressed that that church has existed in the Odesa Region since the beginning of the 18^th century and, therefore, any talks of proselytism of Greek Catholics is out of the question. He made this statement as he commented on accusations brought forward by the press service of the Odesa Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, according to which the construction of a Greek Catholic church in Odesa was called inexpedient and the pastoral activity of the UGCC in Odesa was called expansion and proselytism.

"Before the forced liquidation of the Union by Empress Catherine II in the end of the 18^th century, there were more Greek Catholic churches in the Odesa Region than Orthodox ones, which is testified by numerous archive documents. Therefore, we have not come here to someone else’s territory but returned to the places where our parents lived,” stressed Fr. Volodymyr.

According to the Greek Catholic priest, the union was accepted in the 16^th century by the whole Ukrainian Church headed by the Metropolitan of Kyiv, that is all the Right-bank Ukraine, including the Odesa region was Uniate. “Greek Catholicism is the faith of our ancestors, the faith of the Kyivan Rus. The Orthodox of the Moscow Patriarchate are our nearest brethren as Moscow received the faith from Kyiv,” stressed Fr. Volodymyr.

According to the press service of the UGCC in Odesa, one should not forget historic facts indicating that the UGCC was pushed out to the west of the Dnipro River only due to the persecutions of the Russian authorities. In the 20^th century, thanks to the efforts of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, the UGCC began to return to the Great Ukraine, and in 1946 Stalin by force annexed that church to the Moscow Patriarchate. The authorities passed the Greek Catholic churches to the Russian Orthodox Church or closed them down and the Greek Catholic structures went underground. The UGCC lived in the underground for over 40 years.

“In 1989, the UGCC emerged from the underground and the Ukrainian authorities gave them back a large part of the churches, which was viewed by representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate as the 'defeat of Orthodoxy,'” reads the statement.

The statement also says that today, parishes of the UGCC function all over Ukraine. There are about twenty of them in the Odesa Oblast.