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Published by
www.chiesa,
December 1, 2004
Poland vs. Russia in Kiev.
With an Impossible Referee: the Pope |
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Impossible,
because he is inevitably partial. For centuries,
Ukraine has been disputed by Warsaw and Moscow, by
Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. It's the same
today. All that's left for John Paul II is prayer.
by Sandro
Magister
ROMA – In almost
every one of his public appearances since
Wednesday, November 24, John Paul II has had
something to say to Ukraine. "I assure you of my
prayers for peace," he said on Sunday the 28th,
without explicitly backing either of the two
sparring Viktors, the pro-Russian Yanukovych and
the pro-Western Yushchenko.
But the fact that the Catholic Church is on
Yushchenko's side is clear.
It can be seen from the orange scarves – orange is
the color of the protest on his behalf – that the
Ukrainian pilgrims unfurl in Rome before the
pope's eyes.
It can be seen from the long articles that "L'Osservatore
Romano," the newspaper of the Holy See, dedicates
to events in Ukraine.
It can be seen from the words and activity of the
Greek-Catholic Church of Ukraine, which has five
and a half million members, concentrated
especially in the western part of the country. Its
de facto patriarch, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the
major archbishop of Lviv who is residing this year
in the capital of Kiev, released on November 24,
in both his name and that of the synod, a
statement of enthusiastic support for the pro-Yushchenko
insurgents: "These are courageous, responsible
people, and are quick to sacrifice of themselves.
They should be honored, and their voice should be
heard, because the voice of the people is the
voice of God."
The same day in Kiev, in Europa Square, a mass was
celebrated for the faithful of Lviv who had
gathered for demonstrations in the Ukrainian
capital (see photo). "We are lambs among wolves,"
Husar's representative said in the homily. It was
the feast of St. Victor, the name of both
contenders, but after the mass the celebrations
were wholly and solely for Yushchenko.
In the corridors of power – and, rightly, even
more so in Moscow – there is general agreement
that this alignment of the Catholic Church in
Ukraine with the pro-Western Yushchenko is
reinforced by the fact that John Paul II is a pope
who comes from neighboring Poland.
* * *
In effect, the figures who were most active, all
of them in support of the insurgents, during the
first days of the crisis are Polish: from the
former leader of Solidarnosc, Lech Walesa, who
appeared in the town square of Kiev, to the
president of Poland, Aleksandr Kwasniewski, who
offered to mediate, to geopolitical expert
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who gave lavish advice to
U.S. president George W. Bush.
Poland is the nation which has acted most
vigorously during the past few years to pull
Ukraine out of Russia's orbit and bring it closer
to the West.
Poland was the first country to recognize Ukraine,
the day after it proclaimed its independence from
the Soviet Union, on December 1, 1991.
Poland was the most decisive in pushing for
Ukraine's entry into the Council of Europe and
partnership with NATO, and is so now in projecting
its integration into the European Union.
For Polish pope Karol Wojtyla, the factors that
bring him alongside a pro-Western, pro-Catholic
Ukraine are the same ones that bring him so
dramatically into contrast with Orthodox Russia,
and in particular with the patriarchate of Moscow.
* * *
At the origin of all this is the historic
political and religious rivalry between Poland and
Russia, with Ukraine being contested between the
two.
For the Russians, Ukraine is the land of their
birth. Russia grew out of Kiev more than one
thousand years ago, from the Viking principality
of the Rus; it is there that it converted to
Christianity; it is there that the archetypes of
its faith, art, liturgy, and monasticism are still
found.
But in 1240 the Mongols came and occupied almost
the entire territory. The Russians, however, were
not the ones who reconquered it, but the Poles and
Lithuanians. The Russians emancipated themselves
from the Mongols under the principality of Moscow,
while the area from the Baltic to the Black Sea
constituted the "Res Publica Polonarum," which was
for four centuries the greatest territorial power
in Europe, carrying out aggressive raids all the
way to Moscow and the "golden ring" of the
monasteries of Muscovy. According to tradition,
Russia was saved from one of these Polish
incursions into the heart of its territory by the
Madonna of Kazan: the one depicted in the icon
John Paul II restored to the patriarchate of
Moscow in 2004.
In 1596, in Brest, a synod orchestrated by the
Polish Jesuits decreed the return to obedience to
the pope of Rome of a part of the Orthodox Church
of Ukraine, which maintained its language and
Byzantine rites and customs.
But half a century later the situation was
reversed. A Cossack revolt brought the Russians
back to Kiev, from which point they began to march
toward the west. In the middle of the 1700's,
Catherine the Great brought to the throne of
Poland one of her favorites, Stanislaw Poniatowski.
And at the end of that century Poland disappeared
as a state. Russia had absorbed Warsaw. Gallicia,
with Lviv, went to Austria: it is there that the
Greek-Catholic Church united with Rome survived,
while in the rest of Ukraine Moscow imposed a
return to Orthodoxy.
During the 1800's the Poles rebelled against the
Russians a few times. They had the support of many
European intellectuals, but not of the great
powers, nor of the pope of Rome. It was in that
period that Poland gave birth to the dream of a
"Slavic pope" who would be able to restore its
fortunes.
Poland was reborn as a state after the first world
war. And while Russia's Bolshevik revolution was
in full swing, Poland reoccupied Kiev. The Red
Army counterattacked, arriving at the gates of
Warsaw. The treaty of Riga in 1921 annexed to
Poland western Ukraine and Gallicia, plus part of
Byelorussia and Lithuania. The Ukraine of Kiev,
which was formally independent, joined the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1924.
At the beginning of the second world war, thanks
to its pact with Hitler's Germany, the USSR took
back western Ukraine and also took part of Poland
itself. At the end of the war, Ukraine's borders
were the same it has today, and it was all under
soviet control. This was also true of its
religious characteristics. In 1946, Moscow
organized in Lviv (Lvov in Russian) a synod that
dissolved the Greek-Catholic Church, obliging it
to return to Orthodoxy. Archbishop Slipji, the
legitimate exarch, was imprisoned. He would be
freed in 1963.
The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church had to wait
until 1989 to come out from the catacombs. And it
was immediately confronted with the Orthodox
Church, from which it demanded the restitution of
churches and residences, which it often took by
force. The Orthodox Church itself suffered some
blows from within its own ranks. An autocephalous
patriarchate released himself from obedience to
Moscow on the orders of the excommunicated
metropolitan Philaret, while another Orthodox
Church which had become independent in 1919 and
lived in exile returned home and gained a discreet
following.
It is therefore not surprising that in the
contested elections which have produced the
current tumult, the hierarchy of the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church, which is under obedience to the
patriarchate of Moscow, is the only Church that
has sided with the pro-Russian Yanukovych, with a
declaration from its metropolitan, Vladimir. All
the other Churches, with the Greek-Catholic Church
at the fore, support the pro-Western Yushchenko.
Against this background, in spite of his careful
words, his ecumenical spirit, and his desire for
dialogue, a Polish pope inevitably seems in
Ukraine to be one of the interested parties, not a
possible mediator for peace. All he can do, and
does, is pray.
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