The icon with the relics of St. Volodymyr the Great completes its pilgrimage through the Kharkiv Exarchate
The pilgrim icon with the relics of St. Volodymyr the Great has completed its visit to the parishes of the Kharkiv Exarchate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. For three weeks, from November 15 to December 5, the saint’s relics traveled to communities and monasteries of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, particularly in the Kharkiv and Poltava regions.
This was reported by the press service of the Kharkiv Exarchate.
At the end of the pilgrimage, Bishop Vasyl Tuchapets, Exarch of Kharkiv, called on priests, monks, and laypeople to pray before the icon of St. Volodymyr the Great, especially for a just peace in Ukraine.
“For us, St. Volodymyr is a great intercessor before God: he baptized Kyivan Rus, brought Christianity to our land, and today he prays for us in these trying times of war,” the bishop emphasized.
The pilgrimage of the icon with the relics of St. Volodymyr the Great began on September 14, 2025, at the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord. The spiritual journey will last until the end of 2026 and will cover all eparchies and exarchates of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church so that every believer can personally pray before the shrine and renew their faith in the Christian legacy of St. Volodymyr.
The communities of the Kyiv Archeparchy and the Donetsk and Kharkiv Exarchates of the UGCC have already joined the All-Church pilgrimage of the icon with the relics of St. Volodymyr the Great.
We recall that on January 23, 2025, His Beatitude Sviatoslav, Father and Head of the UGCC, received the relics of St. Volodymyr the Great from the hands of Bishop Oleksandr Drabynko, Metropolitan of Pereyaslav and Vyshneve of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. At that time, the Head of the UGCC emphasized: “The relics of St. Volodymyr are a great sanctity and relic for us, because we are all children of the Church of Volodymyr’s baptism.”
The UGCC Department for Information
