Videomessaggio del Capo e Padre della Chiesa greco-cattolica ucraina nella 181 ª settimana di guerra su vasta scala, 03 agosto 2025
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ!
This week has again seen great pain and numerous tragedies in our homeland. Our hearts especially ache for our Kyiv. On the night of July 31, Russia launched a massive combined strike on our capital. The tragedy claimed at least 31 lives. About 160 people were injured. Children have suffered the most since the start of the full-scale invasion. Five children were killed and 16 more were seriously injured. August 1 was declared a day of mourning in our capital. We pray for the innocent victims of this criminal terrorist act. We embrace with our support all those who have suffered as a result of this great tragedy.
Summing up the month of July, we can say that it was a heroic month. We thank the Armed Forces of Ukraine, our young men and women on the front lines, for holding their positions and defending our homeland. More than 33,000 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded that month. Ukraine is fighting and defending itself heroically.
This week also marked another important event that our society has been eagerly expecting. On July 31, our lawmakers restored the independence of anti-corruption institutions in our country. This is exactly what Ukrainian youth have been demanding. We thank our government for listening to the voice of the Ukrainian people’s conscience. However, we all still have a lot of work to do to ensure that zero tolerance for corruption becomes part of our culture and way of life in all areas of our lives — state, society, and even personal. “No” to corruption means “no” to the destruction of our state and its institutions from within.
Summing up this week, this month, we want to thank all those who supported Ukraine, helped it, prayed for us, and once again we want to say to the whole world: Ukraine stands, Ukraine fights, Ukraine prays.
This week, on July 29, Ukraine, our people, and our Church celebrated the 160th anniversary of the birth of the righteous Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. Our people called him the new Moses of the Ukrainian people, who leads us to true freedom in Christ Jesus.
This week, we listened carefully to his immortal spiritual testament, written in July 1923, a letter to Pope Pius XI, in which Andrey, returning to his native Lviv, accepts the blessing of a martyr’s death. And in this letter our metropolitan says that everything he did in his life, everything he preached, was directed toward the Christianization of the thoughts, deeds, and even patriotic feelings of his people, caring for their eternal salvation.
Today we thank God for the gift of life of our great metropolitan, as well as we thank our Jewish brothers. We were very pleased to learn that the Jewish community of Kyiv also celebrated this anniversary, remembering the great Andrey as the one who organized a huge church campaign to save Jews during the Holocaust, during World War II.
We urge everyone to learn more about this great figure, the leader of our Church, and to pray for his speedy glorification and the completion of the process of his beatification.
This week, our young people, the youth of our Church from Ukraine and various corners of the world, arrived in the Eternal City of Rome to participate in the Jubilee Pilgrimage of Youth. Pope Leo XIV warmly welcomed the youth from around the world and called them the light of the world, directing Christ’s words to the young Christians of our time.
I would like to thank all our girls and boys who went on this pilgrimage, but at the same time I would like to invite you all to Kyiv. On August 16 this year, as part of the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the restoration of the Kyiv Metropolia and the 20th anniversary of the return of the Head of the Church to his seat in Kyiv, we will hold a youth pilgrimage in our Patriarchal Cathedral in Kyiv. Therefore, on this day, August 16, I am expecting to see you, girls and boys, in our Patriarchal House, in our cathedral in Kyiv.
This Sunday, August 3, we went on our annual national pilgrimage to ancient Halych, to Krylos. There we were greeted by the miraculous icon of the Krylos Mother of God. This ancient Halych is a place of strength for all of us, where the princely spring, the princely well, flows. It is the Head of our Church, in his title of Supreme Archbishop of Kyiv and Halych, who has preserved this connection between ancient Kyiv and Halych, where the axis of our national cultural life and consciousness of Kyiv Christianity as a European phenomenon was built.
I thank all those who have come on this pilgrimage. Today, we truly want to pray that Europe will recognize Ukraine as part of its culture, its space.
Today we pray: “Mother of God, save Ukraine. Mother of God, our patroness of Krylos, cover Ukraine with your heavenly protection.”
We implore: “Lord, stop the war and bless our Ukraine 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!
