PAPAL VISIT TO UKRAINE.

In honour of the Papal visit to Ukraine, Catholic Insight brings a special section on the Ukrainian Greek (or Byzantine) Catholic Church. As our readers must know by now--because of our previous articles and because of the opposition to the Pope's visit by the Moscow Patriarch Alexei II reported in the daily press--the Holy Father is going to Ukraine to encourage a Church which has suffered tremendously throughout the twentieth century. Latin-rite Catholics in Ukraine (some 600,000) and Russia also suffered greatly under Soviet Marxist totalitarianism. But Byzantine-rite Catholics suffered particularly when after World War II Stalin dissolved their Church, arrested all the bishops (called eparchs), and handed over all churches and church property to the Orthodox patriarchate of Moscow.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and after Ukraine regained its independence, the faithful of thousands of these churches, mostly in Western Ukraine, took themselves and their church properties out of Orthodox hands and returned to the Ukrainian Byzantine-rite Catholic Church. Needless to say, the Moscow Patriarchate was and is terribly annoyed at this turn of events, and tries to cover up its compliance with previous Soviet politics under the accusation that Catholics are "proselytizing."

Our section below begins with Ukrainians to be beatified, then has brief biographical sketches of two great Ukrainian Church leaders, Andrey Sheptytsky and Josyf Slipyj; then another martyr, Bishop Theodore Romzha, followed by a brief note on the Chernobyl disaster and Italians helping Ukrainian children. Finally, at the back of the magazine we have the story of Ukrainians in Canada, 1900-1930.