His Beatitude Sviatoslav and Carl Anderson participated in presentation of the book about Our Lady of Guadalupe in Kyiv

At the beginning of the event a moderator of the meeting Fr. Ihor Yatsiv paid a special attention to the sense of Marian apparitions in Mexico and its connection with Ukrainian reality.

The Father and Head of the UGCC His Beatitude Sviatoslav greeted the guests and shared his experience of being a member of the Knights of Columbus stating that this is a unique society of Catholic men.

The Head of the Church said that it had been a dream of His Beatitude Lubomyr Husar to see the Knight of Columbus formed in Ukraine.

“The Knights proclaim the Gospel of Jesus with the most humble piety toward the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our Lady of Guadalupe is precisely a special patron of this brotherhood. I am grateful to Carl Anderson for showing us how important the figure of Virgin Mary in the Guadalupe icon is. Today it is a role model of new evangelization in the USA, Western Europe, Kyiv, Mexico and other countries around the world.

The Major Archbishop reckons that the icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe is something larger than just another icon from many others. This image is completely different. Our Lady of Guadalupe is a teacher and a model of new evangelization based on the experience of service in Latin America. “This icon speaks the language of those people, uses categories of their mindset. Our Lady of Guadalupe is an apparition described in Revelation: a woman clothed with the sun; in other words, she is the one who bears in her womb the real sun of truth and hope, who is Christ”, he says.

“Today Virgin Mary teaches us, missioners of the third millennium to master the language of people we are preaching to, the way of thinking and their religious experience. The Gospel of Christ does not ruin the history of a nation, their tradition or a previous religious experience but transform into it.

The coauthor of the book Carl Anderson assumes that this Marin apparition is a unique event at least because it never ceases as it terrestrial and we feel it.

There were two reasons to write this book, according to him. The first lays in urge to show that not only European countries have testified Marian apparitions not in European countries only but in America too, which has always been mostly a protestant country and now is secularizing. The second reason is canonization of Juan Diego, a layman who Virgin Mary had appeared to.

Carl Anderson finished by saying that apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe is not a mere historic event of a five hundred-year old girl, but it is news about peace, reconciliation and unity for America.

The UGCC Department for Information