Video Message of the Head of the UGCC on the 188th Week of the Full-Scale War, September 21, 2025
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ!
We continue to count the days and nights, weeks of this bloody, sacrilegious war. We have now entered the 188th week, since the full-scale invasion of Russian troops destroyed the peace and tranquility of ordinary Ukrainians. This week was again a week of heavy fighting on the front lines. A week of constant sirens and air raid alerts throughout Ukraine. A week when every night our capital, cities, and villages, especially in the east, south, and north of Ukraine, were assaulted by Russian drones and missiles. Our capital was again the epicenter of those strikes. However, in recent days, a massive missile strike was launched on our Dnipropetrovsk region, claiming people’s lives and systematically destroying the vital infrastructure of our cities and villages.
We are especially concerned for those whom we are once again forced to evacuate from frontline cities, towns, and villages. The aforementioned Dnipropetrovsk region has announced a forced evacuation from 18 settlements.
Our prayers are extended to Sumy and the Sumy region, which are currently the scene of modern technological warfare. Everything in these areas, near Sumy and in the Kharkiv region, is being destroyed daily by guided bombs launched from Russian territory.
Today, we are grateful to God and the Armed Forces of Ukraine for keeping us alive. We are grateful for the resilience of ordinary people, our doctors, our rescuers, and our teachers, who have courageously started the new school year despite the war. We want to thank the parents who, at the cost of their own lives, are fighting for their children’s right to life and their right to education.
Special thanks go to our defenders. We realize that every day, every week that has passed, has been paid for with someone’s blood. We want to thank our boys and girls on the front lines for their courage and resilience in the face of fatigue.
And we want the voice of our people to be heard once again by the international community. Therefore, we proclaim: Ukraine stands, Ukraine fights, Ukraine prays.
Today, on this Sunday, which we call Exaltation Sunday, we are happy to share some good news from the wounded Dnipropetrovsk region. Our Donetsk Exarchate has suffered the most in this war. More than half of our parishes and churches located in the occupied territory have been virtually destroyed. Religious life of our Church is banned there. But in the free land, life goes on. Our Church is comforted by God’s blessing and unprecedented development. And today, this Sunday, we consecrated the newly built Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the city of Kamyanske, formerly Dniprodzerzhynsk, in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
This is a unique city because it is a city of metallurgists. It is a city where people from all over the former Soviet Union have gathered and who today, regardless of their national or ethnic affiliation, have all stood up to defend their homeland. And there, our community and our parish, which was founded more than 30 years ago, are flourishing and developing.
The founders of this community were repressed Greek Catholics who, after serving their sentences in concentration camps in Siberia, could not return to their homes in western Ukraine. And it was they who founded our community in the city of Kamyanske. What did this community go through? How many hardships and bureaucratic hurdles did they have to overcome in order to obtain a plot of land and win the right to exist? And today, as if crowning this development, after more than 30 years, we consecrated a newly built church.
We truly felt that this occasion, this celebration that God has given to His people, is a celebration of hope—in the context of the jubilee year of hope. We understand that God’s people build churches not so much for the present, although this church is needed today, but for their future, for the young people, the children who gather in this parish today, who seek God and find Him here.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who helped build this church, because the activities of our missionary parish center are very meaningful. Today, God’s people serve God and save human lives there.
We thank father Ihor Pihulych, rector of the church, our bishops, the exarchs of the Donetsk Exarchate, the retired exarch Bishop Stepan Menyok, and the new exarch, the young and energetic Bishop Maksym Ryabukha. We also thank all those who make up this community and develop our Church here.
Looking into the faces of these people, our young men and women, our soldiers, we see victory in their eyes. This victory, which we celebrate by honoring the honest and life-giving Cross of the Lord. The victory that God once gave to the future emperor Constantine in the revelation of the Cross of the Lord in heaven. This victory of God’s power in the conditions of this war today pulsates in the souls and hearts of our faithful, especially in the wounded Dnipropetrovsk region.
We thank the Lord God for being present among us. Not only with us, but also within us. And that today, through the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, He has granted a sanctuary for His people.
Today we pray: God, bless Ukraine! Bless our young men and women on the front lines! Bless all those who seek You, hope in You, and call upon You. All those who are building a living temple, the temple of the Body of Christ, the temple of human souls, especially in our eparchies and exarchates, where there is the most bloodshed and pain today. God, bless Ukraine, the wounded land, the wounded people with Your righteous heavenly peace!
The blessing of the Lord be upon you, through His grace and love for mankind, always, now and forever, and for the ages of ages. Amen.
Glory to Jesus Christ!
