The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and the Ministry of Health Care have signed an agreement about cooperation

On March 15, 2009, in Kyiv an agreement about cooperation between the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and the Ministry of Health Care of Ukraine was signed. From the UGCC the document was signed by His Beatitude Lubomyr, Head of the UGCC, and from the MHC of Ukraine Minister of Health Care Vasyl Knyazevych. The parties concluded this agreement "aiming to regulate principles of co-operation in the matters of humanizing medical treatment on the basis of respect of rights and human dignity; traditional spiritual, moral-ethical and cultural values; and realizing mutual responsibility for making Ukrainian society healthy." The purpose of this agreement is to harmonize principles, directions and forms of cooperation of groups in the medical sphere directed at humanization by way of forming value-based and moral-ethical guidelines. An important point of the agreement is the mutual concern of the parties about giving spiritual and psychological help and satisfaction of religious necessities of workers and patients of establishments of the MHC of Ukraine. To realize this purpose the agreement foresees a point which talks about providing in the set order of the law access on the territory of institutions to clergy and laity whom the UGCC will prepare for this ministry. Also, the MHC will try to create favorable terms for providing spiritual and psychological help and the conduct of divine services. In its turn the UGCC pledged properly to prepare and delegate those priests and laity called to ministry in the institutions of the MHC of Ukraine.  According to the document, the parties will co-operate in the following directions: • propagating common human values and ideals, a highly moral, responsible, socially useful and healthy way of life; • charitable help, informational and spiritual and educational activity aimed at overcoming the social isolation of persons; • developing and conducting programs to prevent AIDS, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other psychological dependencies;  • preparing methodological recommendations for providing spiritual and psychological support, satisfaction of needs for the holy sacraments and other Church rites; • encouraging possibilities for charitable institutions and separate donors to provide charitable help; • equipping chapels and prayer rooms on the territory of institutions in order to create the proper conditions to realize religious needs; • creating and supporting the activity of centers of medical-social patronage of persons and hospices; • developing and conducting tutorial programs of humanities disciplines (culture studies, ethics); • conducting conferences, scholarly-practical seminars and other educational events. At the completion of the ceremonial meeting His Beatitude Lubomyr, "appreciating the many years of ongoing, sacrificial work for the health of the Ukrainian people and in matters of improving cooperation between the Church and state," presented Mr. Knyazevych with an award from the Major Archbishop.

Information Department of the UGCC