UGCC experiencing "total persecution" in Crimea

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As the Russian president signed a bill to annex Crimea Tuesday, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the peninsula has been experiencing what a Church official calls “total persecution.”

“At this moment all Ukrainian Greek Catholic life in Crimea is paralyzed,” Father Volodymyr Zhdan, chancellor of the Stryi eparchy in western Ukraine, told CNA March 18.

From 2006 to 2010, Father Zhdan served as chancellor of the Odessa-Krym Exarchate, which encompassed both the mainland port city of Odessa and the Crimean Peninsula.

Since late February, the peninsula has seen the emergence of pro-Russian troops, who have taken control of its airports, parliament and telecommunication centers.

Referring to the kidnapping of three Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests in Crimea by pro-Russian forces over the weekend, Father Zhdan stressed that one such case could be called a mistake, but that “multiple kidnappings are not an accident.”

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In addition to the arrests in Crimea, several other problems at Ukrainian Greek Catholic churches throughout the country have been reported in recent days.

According to the Religious Information Service of Ukraine, an important 130-foot electrical cable was stolen from a small chapel in the Kherson region north of Crimea over the weekend. On March 15, a parish in Kolomyya was vandalized, and another in Dora was burned to the ground, reportedly from arson. Both damaged parishes are in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, which borders Romania in the west of Ukraine.

In Crimea, clergy have received threatening phone calls and messages. At the home of one apprehended priest, a note was left that read this should be “a lesson to all Vatican agents.”

“This is not new,” Bishop Vasyl Ivasyuk, who served as exarch of Odesa-Krym from 2003 to 2014, told CNA.

“During Soviet times, we were always accused of being ‘agents’ of the Vatican,” Bishop Ivasyuk continued. “Of course not all people in Crimea think we are spies, but there is a very active pro-Russian group there that does.”

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was heavily persecuted during the Soviet era; it was considered illegal and operated completely underground until 1989.

“The Church emerged from the underground 25 years ago, having been the largest illegal church in the world for 45 years prior,” Bishop Boris Gudziak, eparch of Paris, explained to CNA last month.

“The UGCC was the biggest social body of opposition to the Soviet ideology and totalitarian system. It was completely illegal, but in the catacombs, it was spiritually free because it was not collaborating.”

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