What is happening today in Ukraine concerns the entire planet. On a geopolitical level, it has become evident that the war launched by Russia against Ukraine has a neo-imperial dimension with repercussions from the Baltic Sea to North Korea.
It is the same on an ecclesiological level. The fierce struggle waged by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow against Ukraine, to the point of describing Russia’s aggression as a “holy war”, led to a schism with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. This positioning of the Moscow Patriarchate was condemned in 2024 by most Christian Churches, in Rome, Geneva and Athens. This is why the dividing lines, but also the ongoing existential rapprochements between Christians in Ukraine, have repercussions on the entire ecumenical movement (1).
Ukraine, common home
In Ukraine, as early as 2017, the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations adopted a joint statement: “ Ukraine is our common home,” in which spiritual leaders called for interfaith and inter-religious cooperation for the benefit of peace among all citizens. According to a survey by the Razoumkov Institute, carried out in December 2023, the majority (59%) of respondents note that the relationship between the faithful of different Churches and religions in the region where they live is calm.
However, 65% of respondents believe that the Russian Orthodox Church and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow encourage and support Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Ukrainian citizens therefore support the recent law passed by the Ukrainian Parliament requiring, for reasons of national security, any religious organization to cut its administrative ties with Russia. They are particularly worried about Ukrainian believers who live in the 20% of occupied territory where they are victims of torture, rape or summary executions.
Faced with Russian barbarism
In this context of renewed national cohesion due to Russian barbarism, we must carefully follow the recent exchanges between the two main religious leaders in Ukraine, Mgr. Epiphany Doumenko, the Orthodox metropolitan of Kyiv, and Mgr. Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Between them, in fact, they represent nearly 25 million faithful.
While Mgr Sviatoslav obtained in an unprecedented way from the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew a preface to his latest book (A message of peace), Bishop Epiphani was received for his part, for the first time in an individual meeting, by Pope Francis on December 13, 2024. The two Ukrainian leaders, thus cross-supported by the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch, met on January 14 in Kyiv. In particular, they expressed their wish to resume the work of the “Kyivian Church Study Group”.
An original ecclesiology
This meta-modern ecclesiology is very little known in the West because the narrative that prevailed until the 20th century confused the phenomenon of uniatism with that of hybrid proselytism. However, Western theologians, Catholic and Orthodox, recognized in France in 2004, in the book The challenges of uniatism, in the wake of Balamandthat one could not confuse Ukrainian ecclesiology with what may have happened in Greece or Damascus. However, the wish expressed by Olivier Clément to write an ecumenical history of this very original Church of Kyiv has not yet been realized.
We must therefore rejoice, as a first step in this historic work, the recent publication by Anatoli Babinskyi, published by Salvator, of the book The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a brief history (2025), but also the recent exhibition, initiated by the work of the Orient, “Christians of Ukraine, a fight for freedom”, conceived in an ecumenical way, dedicated to the Churches of Ukraine.
Finally, still in France, the Institut Chrétiens d’Orient and the Collège des Bernardins are at the origin of a third promising initiative, namely a research seminar devoted to the study of the ecclesial situation in Ukraine and to the necessary reform of the Orthodox Church. This ecumenical seminar, which will take place between March and June 2025 in Les Bernardins, in person and remotely, is open to any person of good will interested in this Church of Kyiv and seeking to contribute to peace (2).
