Canadian Committee Defends Ukrainian  Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate

By Halya Wawryshyn

In the late 1990s, a group of Ukrainian-Canadians who traveled to Ukraine became aware of the relations between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP).

They learned that though Ukraine was independent, the Moscow Patriarchate was holding on to many historic Ukrainian churches. Furthermore, the Moscow Patriarchate was aggressively trying to keep the Kyiv Patriarchate, which like the Ukrainian Catholic Church, celebrates the Divine Liturgy in Ukrainian and upholds Ukrainian customs and traditions, from establishing a foothold in many parts of Ukraine.

Upon returning to Canada, they decided to organize a Committee in Defense of the UOC-KP. The committee initially consisted of four Orthodox and four  Catholic members.  All shared a love of the Ukrainian church, its language, customs, traditions, and the rite in which the church services are conducted.  The first meeting was held on February 10, 2001 on the initiative of Iryna Washchuk, who became the president.

From February to July 2001, this small group made great strides. They advertised their activities and collected money from all parts of Canada. Their first  undertaking was to help with the reconstruction of the Petra Pavla Sobor in Dnipropetrovsk. This church, which was once a women’s monastery, was made into a movie house under the Soviets and, later, totally destroyed.  The committee took on the reconstruction project after Bishop Adrian of Dnipropetrovsk requested their help and informed them that the City of Dnipropetrovsk was giving vast sums of money to the UOC-MP in the city and nothing to the UOC-KP.

During the 2001 World Forum of Ukrainians in Kyiv, several members of the committee visited Dnipropetrovsk where they saw the conditions first-hand. Since then, they have been sending parcels regularly to help needy parishioners in the area. Financial aid has also gone out to other churches in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kirovohrad regions.

Recently, a lot of aid has been sent to the Sumy area in north-eastern Ukraine, a heavily Russified area. During the presidential elections last winter, Iryna Waschuk and another committee member, Olha Danylak, visited Sumy.  There, they discovered that anti-Ukrainian hostility was evident in schools. They learned, to their amazement, that in the village Torhovitsia, near Kirovohrad, Ukrainian-language materials at a children’s kindergarten were burned in a fire set by arsonists who are opposed to the teaching of the Ukrainian language. When the committee reported this to the Ukrainian National Federation, Toronto West Branch, its members collected sufficient funds to replace what was lost in the fire.

After the Orange Revolution, Iryna Washchuk and the committee decided it was important to bring Bishop Mefodij Sribniak, the bishop in Sumy since 2004,  to Canada in order to give him an opportunity to visit Ukrainian churches and meet Ukrainian-Canadian priests and bishops.

During his visit last summer, many people in Toronto and the surrounding area met Bishop Mefodij and attended his talks as well as the banquet in his honour. Through these events, a sizeable sum of money was collected for the reconstruction, strengthening, and rebuilding of the Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate in the Sumy region.

“The Ukrainian community [in Ontario] was very supportive during Bishop Mefodij’s visit,” says Iryna Washchuk.  “People greeted and welcomed him very warmly. It warmed his soul and was very morally uplifting for him.”

Upon returning to Ukraine, Bishop Mefodij began to work with renewed vigour and enthusiasm. He visited the parish priests in Sumy and, with the donations he received in Canda, helped numerous parishes, priests, and destitute parishioners.

With the donations, the Bishop has also put out a small Ukrainian prayer book or molytovnyk. It is interesting

to note that the Bishop felt it necessary to preface the prayer book with a two-page explanation of why it is acceptable, even desirable, to pray in one’s own native language, that it should not be reserved only for bazaars and mundane daily living. Up until recently, many people in Ukraine felt that praying only in Russian could be acceptable to God.

In addition, Bishop Mefodij is now publishing a small church newspaper –the only Ukrainian newspaper in the entire Sumy area.

Last September, Patriarch Filaret, of the Kyiv Patriarchate, visited Sumy in recognition of the 300-year anniversary of Sumy and 10-year anniversary of the renewed Ukrainian Orthodox parish of Sumy.

The local populace, witnessing so many positive improvements, has been uplifted and new members have been coming over to the Kyiv Church says Bishop Mefodij. He says that people are slowly coming to national consciousness and realizing that having their own church is important. This is not being overlooked by the Moscow Church still intent on destabilizing and demoralizing the adherents of the Kyiv Patriarchate.

Recently, Bishop Mefodij sent a letter in which he expressed his thanks to the committee and to the many organizations and individuals who contributed money or helped him in any way during his stay in Toronto.  In the letter he writes: “With your financial support we have been able to in a short time spread and develop and significantly and substantially increase our eparchy, to organize people in the regions and oblasts for the rebirth of our Ukrainian National Church.”

The letter included a long and detailed list of all the ways in which his parishes were helped with the donations.  Copies of his letter were sent to Bishops and hierarchies of both the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada as well as the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

Our community in Canada welcomed Bishop Mefodij Sribniak with a generous outpouring of warmth, bestowed on him as a priest and as a true patriot of Ukraine. As an emissary of the Kyiv Patriarchate, he enlightened many people who had been unaware of the situation within the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

It is heartening to realize that the dedicated work of such a small committee, working on such a worthy goal can touch so many people. Hopefully, this small committee will grow as more people become motivated to help the suffering Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, which is devoted to retaining Ukrainian spirituality in the face of relentless opposition.