The presentation of the new edition “Anthology of the UGCC documents on ecumenical issues” took place at IES

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The presentation of the new edition “Anthology of the UGCC documents on ecumenical issues” took place at IES

On November 29, the Institute of Ecumenical Studies of the Ukrainian Catholic University held an online presentation and discussion about the recently published collection “Anthology of the UGCC documents on ecumenical issues”. The book presents the documents of the UGCC, which show its attitude to various aspects of ecumenism, to the unity of Christians in the Ukrainian context, primarily between Churches rooted in the historical Kyivan Church.

The event took place within the framework of the IES Ecumenical Lectorium project – a series of academic and practical meetings for the UGCC priests. The presentation was moderated by Taras Kurylets, a researcher of the IES and the main editor of the collection.

Starting the meeting the IES acting director Fr. Roman Fihas said that the UGCC is a pioneer of the ecumenical movement in Ukraine, because, unlike other Ukrainian Churches, during the 30 years of independence it had the opportunity to develop both its internal and foreign policy independently, to draw from the achievements of the Catholic and world ecumenical movement, to freely develop interdenominational relations with different local Churches. As a result, we can talk about certain achievements in the ecumenical activity of the UGCC, which today we can measure in the developed documents.

Fr. Iwan Dacko, the president of the IES, noted that the creation of church documents is the fruit of the work not only of one head of the Church, but of the entire community of the faithful. Father Iwan recalled the difficult context in which these documents appeared and noted their important influence in the formation of inter-church relations in Ukraine.

Fr. Ihor Shaban, head of the UGCC Commission on interconfessional and interreligious relations, thanked the IES for the important work in spreading the ecumenical achievements of the UGCC and expressed the hope that these documents would be known to priests and the faithful.

Fr. George Kovalenko, rector of the Open Orthodox University of Saint Sophia-Wisdom, emphasized the high level of documents developed by the leadership of the UGCC and drew attention to the common challenges faced both by representatives of the UGCC and OCU in the context of the war.

Video in Ukrainian

The event was organized by IES with the support of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.