MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj’s Son Baptised in Kyiv

This past Christmas Eve, MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj and his wife Lina Fedko were blessed with the birth of their first son Felix Roman named after his late great-grandfather Felix and his late grandfather Roman.

Felix Roman was baptized according to the Byzantine Rite of the Ukrainian Catholic Church on July 28, 2010 at the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ at Nykolska Slobidska 5 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Borys and Lina felt it important to baptise their son in their ancestral church in Ukraine, in its capital Kyiv, and at the newly constructed Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ. As Ukraine’s ancestral churches were persecuted throughout the centuries and their bishops, priests and religious leaders martyred, the churches today find themselves under pressure and threat once again.

Borys was deeply honoured to have an audience with His Beatitude Patriarch Lubomyr Husar of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, and agreed to the Patriarch’s suggestion that a second middle name Volodymyr be added as the baptism of Felix Roman took place on the Feast Day of St. Volodymyr, the most important Saint’s Day in the calendar of the Ukrainian churches.

The Wrzesnewskyj Family was honoured that the baptism was officiated by Odessa Bishop Vasyl Ivasiuk and Kyiv Auxiliary Bishop Yosyf Milan in the newly built cathedral.

Special guests and friends joining the Wrzesnewskyj Family at the baptism ceremony and  lunch reception were to include: poet laureate Dmytro Pavlychko; former political dissident Levko Lukyanenko; Atena Pashko - poet and widow of Vyacheslav Chornovil; poet, screenwriter and political leader Ivan Drach; Verkhovna Rada deputy Volodymyr Filenko; and the former of head of Ukraine’s Central Electoral Commission Yaroslav Davydovych.

PHOTO 

Baptism of  Felix Roman Volodymyr Wrzesnewskyj, held by godparents, with on-looking parents Lina Fedko and Borys Wrzesnewskyj in Kyiv’s Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ