Spiritual Decolonization, National Security, and Religious Freedom: Squaring a Triangle in the Case of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Andriy Fert is a UNET non-resident fellow at Zentrum für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien in Berlin.

Dmytro Vovk is a visiting associate professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

In June 2023, the fashionable Ukrainian multimedia cultural project Ukraїner published an article on decolonization. Decolonization, as the author describes it, is “a process of cleansing the public space from the markers of (Russian) occupation,” including monuments, mosaics, names of streets, and public premises associated with the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia.

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The Pope and the War

This series explores how Pope Francis as the head of the Catholic Church and the Vatican deals with the Russia-Ukraine war.

Many observers call the Pope’s approach ambiguous.

On the one hand, the Catholic Church has provided humanitarian support to Ukrainians affected by the war from its very beginning in 2014. For example, from 2016 to 2018 the Catholic Church raised almost €16 million through the “Pope for Ukraine” initiative and funded several programs for internally displaced people and those living in the combat zone. Such programs provided mobile health clinics, food vouchers, and psychological help for adults and minors; and repaired and insulated houses damaged by the war. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Pope Francis has made several public speeches and gestures in support of Ukrainian victims of the war and has tried to advance humanitarian efforts—including attempts to facilitate the return to Ukraine of Ukrainian children deported by Russia—and to highlight the moral catastrophe of the Bucha massacre and similar crimes.

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The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Pope Francis, and Russia’s War against Ukraine

Photo by Barbara Mair

Thomas Mark Németh is Professor of Theology of the Eastern Churches at the Catholic Faculty of the University of Vienna and Priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

In this article I focus on the Pope’s attitude toward the Russian-Ukrainian war in the context of the Vatican’s relations with Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC). [1] Standing in full communion with the Roman Pontiff and belonging to the Catholic Church, the UGCC is also a sui iuris Church with a specific autonomy, having its own first hierarch and a Synod of Bishops and sharing the Byzantine Rite with the Orthodox Church.

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