The Patriarch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church on a Just Peace with Russia

Russia’s war against Ukraine has a significant religious dimension. The Kremlin relies heavily on the Moscow Patriarchate to provide ideological and moral justification for its aggression. Moscow Patriarch Kirill described Russia’s invasion as a type of holy war and declared Russia’s fallen soldiers to be veritable holy Christian martyrs.

As President Donald Trump begins peace talks to end this war, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, will join Hudson to give remarks on:

• The plight of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a church in communion with Rome, under the Russian occupation, which outlawed it.
• The status of Christian prisoners of war, including two Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests who survived Russian torture and imprisonment.
• The status of deported children from the occupied areas of Ukraine.
• The Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations and the religious situation in Ukraine.

The patriarch will then join a panel discussion on the prospects for a just peace with Reverend Borys Gudziak, who serves as the metropolitan-archbishop of Philadelphia of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and who recently returned from a visit to the front lines; and Mitred Archpriest Dr. Mark M. Morozowich, the Bishop Basil H. Losten Ukrainian Church Studies Chair at the Catholic University of America. Nina Shea will moderate the conversation.