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On July 1, 2008, on the premises of the Retreat Center of the Lviv Archeparchy (Lviv-Bryukhovychi), the first session of a working-group created by His Beatitude Lubomyr, Major Archbishop of Kyiv and Halych, for the subsequent working out of the strategy of missionary activity of the UGCC was held. The preliminary session, which started the wide discussion of this subject, included the participation of His Beatitude Lubomyr, rectors of seminaries of the UGCC in Ukraine, superiors of men’s and women’s religious orders and communities, heads of commissions of the UGCC, and Reverend Bishops Dionisiy (Lyakhovych), Hlib (Lonchyna), Stepan (Meniok) and Yaroslav (Pryriz), and took place on January 12, 2007. Consequently a few meetings took place in which took part one representative from each of the following four groups: rectors of seminaries, councils of the superiors of men’s and of women’s institutes of consecrated life, and chairmen of commissions of the UGCC. The current meeting of the working-group was the continuation of this important task in the life of the Church.

Opening the meeting, His Beatitude Lubomyr spoke about the modern stage of work on this subject and about the mechanism of work. Then a report on already-developed suggestions was presented by Mr. Hryhoriy Seleschuk, head of the Commission of the UGCC on Matters of Immigrants.

A meeting of representatives of clergy of the UGCC who minister in the eastern diaspora, the Russian Federation, Belarus, the Baltic countries, and Kazakhstan, helped make concrete decisions and set directions for subsequent development. Until lunch the priests conducted their meeting parallel with the working-group, and after lunch both groups worked together. The lecture of Mr. Ihor Markov was heard in this part. He is co-coordinator of the project «Estimation and determination of necessities and possibility of activity of the UGCC and Caritas-Ukraine in the migratory sphere, in particular in relation to pastoral help, social care, and the legal defense of Ukrainian migrant-workers.» The speaker said that, as part of the project, nine countries in which Ukrainian-migrants work were worked on: 8 countries of the European Union and the Russian Federation. Mr. Markov named 3 dangerous tendencies which were found out during the research: 1) the amount of Ukrainians who illegally travel to the countries of the EU is growing; 2) the amount of migrants is growing, generally; 3) despite the growth of the social status of Ukrainian migrants, in the field of legislation, because of a lack of protection on the part of Ukraine, the perception of them in their countries of residence is becoming worse.

The speech of Mr. Ihor Markov and the consequent presentation of priests from the eastern diaspora on the pastoral situation in their countries and discussion of the theme of the meeting by the working-group’s participants confirmed the importance and simultaneously the many-sided nature of the question of the missionary activity of the UGCC. The main task today, according to the Head of the UGCC, is the necessity to awaken in the nation a missionary spirituality, which consists in this, that everybody will care not only about his own salvation, but also will make efforts for the salvation of his neighbor.

The participants of the meeting in their groups will continue the work tomorrow. A feature of this day will be their joint meeting with members of the Synod of the Bishops of the Kyiv and Halych Archbishopric, which will start at 15.00.

Information Department of the UGCC