Fourteen UGCC bishops participate in meeting of European bishops of Eastern Rite Catholic Churches

This year's meeting of bishops of Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, which is held annually under the auspices of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences, is being held November 3-6, in Oradea, Romania. Representatives from fourteen Eastern Catholic Churches, including fourteen bishops from Ukraine, will speak about the new evangelization in Eastern Rite Catholic Churches of Europe, said Bishop Bohdan (Dziurakh), Secretary of the Synod of Bishops, who is taking part in this meeting. Fr. Borys Gudziak, Ph.D., rector of UCU, will report on the state of the Eastern Catholic Churches after the fall of communism. The meeting will be attended by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the president of the Pontifical Council to promote the new evangelization, who will present the main topic of discussion, Cardinal Peter Erdo, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, who heads the Council of European Bishops' Conferences, and Archbishop Cyril Vasil, Secretary of the Congregation for Eastern Churches. It is also likely that Patriarch Sviatoslav (Shevchuk) will give a speech. “The theme of the meeting, ‘You Will Be My Witnesses: Evangelization in the Catholic Eastern Rite Churches in Europe,’  is a kind of an appeal to the new evangelization, which the pope spoke about a few years ago. This poses before the bishops two tasks: on the one hand, to cure, with the grace of God , the spiritual emptiness that was left behind the Communist regime, and, on the other, to mitigate the distortion of spiritual values​​, caused by a wave of secularism, which is coming from the secular environment of Western Europe,” said Bishop Bohdan. According to the bishop, reflections on this topic should help the Catholic bishops of Europe to respond to the call of the Holy Father and to contribute to the evangelization of the European continent.  

UGCC Information Department