“The World Is Once Again on the Brink of Danger”: Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Calls for Prayer and Environmental Conversion on the 40th Anniversary of the Chernobyl Disaster
Forty years after the Chernobyl catastrophe, Ukraine once again lives under the shadow of a nuclear threat—this time not caused by accident, but by deliberate aggression. Not all have drawn the lessons of 1986: the enemy has turned nuclear facilities into instruments of blackmail, and the world once again finds itself on the brink of danger. His Beatitude Sviatoslav, Father and Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, warned of this in his address on the anniversary of the disaster, urging the international community to act before a new tragedy outweights the old one.
In honoring the memory of the Chernobyl liquidators, the Head of the UGCC described them as the living embodiment of supreme self-sacrifice. According to His Beatitude Sviatoslav, these people “went into the fire and overcame the consequences of the nuclear disaster not for glory, but to save lives,” becoming “a living shield for all of Europe and the world.” He drew a parallel between their sacrifice and that of contemporary Ukrainian soldiers: “Today, as Ukraine once again burns in the flames of war, we see that same spirit of self-sacrifice in our soldiers and rescuers.”
His Beatitude Sviatoslav emphasized that the tragedy of 1986 was not merely a technical failure. “This catastrophe was not merely a technical failure—it was the result of the spiritual blindness of the Soviet system, which placed ideology above human life and false grandeur above truth and moral responsibility,” the statement reads. Chernobyl, according to the Primate, remains a reminder that “humanity cannot arbitrarily and with impunity rule over God’s world.”
The Primate also drew attention to the ecological dimension of Chernobyl in the context of the current war. He condemned the use of civilian nuclear infrastructure as a tool of blackmail and warned that “the world has once again found itself on a dangerous precipice, where human pride and irresponsibility can lead to new catastrophes.” He called on the international community to take decisive action “to prevent a recurrence of a tragedy whose scale could exceed the events of 1986.”
The statement also announced the nationwide eco-social campaign “Candle in Remembrance,” under the slogan “Remember the past—protect the future,” initiated by the UGCC Bureau for Ecology. The faithful and all people of goodwill are invited to light a candle on their windowsill on Sunday, April 26, at 8:00 PM as a sign of prayer and remembrance. His Beatitude Sviatoslav also called for an “ecological conversion,” reminding that “the abuse of the Creator’s gifts—pollution of air and water, depletion of the earth, and destruction of nature—is a sin against God, our neighbors, and future generations.”
The full text of the Statement was published on April 21, 2026, on the official website of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
The UGCC Department for Information
