Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk on life, faith, Ukraine, and the Greek Catholic Church

John Burger is a Catholic journalist and author of a book-length interview with Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk titled At the Foot of the Cross: Lessons from Ukraine  (Our Sunday Visitor, 2023). Archbishop Shevchuk has been Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Galicia since 2011.  In that role, he’s witnessed the historical convulsions suffered by Ukraine: in the 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea, Moscow’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine’s east, and finally Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Archbishop Shevchuk provides a religious overview of the situation, with particular attention to the situation of Ukraine’s Greek Catholics, Christians who follow Eastern liturgical traditions but are in union with Rome.

Mr. Burger spoke with Catholic World Report recently about his book.

CWR: What inspired you to write At the Foot of the Cross? Presumably, the idea came to you before the February 2022 Russian further invasion of Ukraine?

John Burger: Although I’m a Latin Catholic, I’ve been interested in Eastern Christianity for some time—especially the Byzantine tradition. I’ve been writing for Catholic media since 1993, and I began to notice that the Catholic press focused almost exclusively on Roman Catholicism. So I’ve tried to stay attuned to interesting stories from “the East.”

In 2018, when I learned that His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, was planning to visit the United States, I requested an in-person interview. So I met him at the Supreme Convention of the Knights of Columbus, where he was the keynote speaker, in Baltimore.

After I wrote a couple of articles based on the interview, a member of his staff asked if I would be interested in writing a biography of His Beatitude. I agreed to work on it, but His Beatitude was averse to having a biography written about him. He agreed, however, to collaborate on a book-length interview. I envisioned it to appear in question-and-answer format.

CWR: At the time of the interview, what most struck you about Archbishop Shevchuk?

Burger: During that first meeting in Baltimore, I was impressed with his personal story about growing up in Soviet Ukraine. He was born in 1970, so he spent the first 18 years of his life under the USSR, which had banned the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1946. He had some great stories about how Greek Catholics practiced the faith in secret, finding ways to hand down the faith and to receive the sacraments from a clandestine priest.

In fact, he knew many people—including members of his own family—who put their lives and livelihoods on the line for the sake of fidelity—fidelity not only to Christ but to a Church that is in communion with Rome.

I was also impressed by the message he had for the Knights of Columbus, delivered in his keynote speech. He had a persuasive way of arguing that Ukraine matters in geopolitical affairs, and that America should pay attention to what was going on there, because if that situation was not properly addressed, we ourselves would have to deal with the same threat that Ukraine was then facing. This was in 2018, a few years before the war in Ukraine really caught the world’s attention, but Russia had already invaded, in 2014. Crimea was occupied, and the Eastern region of Donbas was the scene of a conflict with Russian-backed separatists, a war which claimed 14,000 lives even before the full-scale invasion of 2022.

Looking back, his words seem prescient.

In 2019, I went to Ukraine for a much longer interview with His Beatitude, which would provide most of the material for the book. Over the course of two full days, His Beatitude was able to expand much more on the trajectory his life took from those early days, when the practice of the faith was pretty much limited to the home setting—listening in secret to a broadcast of the Divine Liturgy over Vatican Radio, to his studies in basic medical care, to his fulfilling his mandatory military service as a field medic, studying for the priesthood in a clandestine seminary.

By the time he got out of the service, the Soviet Union was opening up, and the Church came out from the “underground.” He was sent to Argentina to complete his studies for the priesthood, and then to Rome for graduate studies in moral theology. Ukrainian society had been severely damaged by the decades of living under communism. People had to learn again how to trust one another, and they had to relearn some lessons about the truth. Under the Soviets, it wasn’t safe to express what you were really thinking, so people learned how to survive by being duplicitous.

So there was a need for bright minds who were trained in subjects like moral theology, and Sviatoslav was a natural to train young priests who would, in turn, be spiritual guides for a revived Church and, by extension, a recovering society. In time, he returned to Argentina as a bishop, but it wasn’t long before he was called back home, as the head and father of the Church, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, retired, and the Synod of Bishops elected Bishop Sviatoslav to succeed him. He was only 40.

CWR: In light of subsequent events in Ukraine, what strikes or surprises you most about Archbishop Shevchuk, particularly in light of the history of Greek Catholics?  The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which adheres to the Byzantine liturgy but is in union with Rome, has long suffered at the hands of the Orthodox, especially the Russian Orthodox—whether the latter acts as a religion or a lapdog of the state.  How does the situation of Ukrainian Greek Catholics look?

Burger: Certainly there’s never been full acceptance by the Orthodox in general of the Union of Brest, the 16th-century agreement whereby several Orthodox bishops accepted the authority of the pope over them, leading to the creation of the “Uniate” Church, now known as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. It’s why the Church was suppressed several times when Moscow had the upper hand in Ukraine—under the Tsars and especially under the Soviet regime. It’s being suppressed again, to varying degrees, in the Ukrainian territories that Russia is now occupying.

When Ukraine became independent in 1991 and the Catholic Church was reclaiming properties that the Soviets had handed over to the Moscow Patriarchate, there was a lot of tension, for sure. Now the tensions seem to be more between the two Orthodox Churches in Ukraine: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, whose autocephaly was recognized in 2018 by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. There seem to be very good relations between the newer Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church—certainly between their respective primates, Sviatoslav and Epiphanius. Sviatoslav sees the Orthodox Church of Ukraine—which answers to no “higher” Church outside of Ukraine—as the main interlocutor with the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the realm of ecumenical dialogue.

But Sviatoslav also has stood up for the rights of the Moscow Patriarchate Church, which has been the subject of investigation by the government in Kyiv for elements in that Church that actively support the Russian aggression. Sviatoslav has not only spoken out for that Church’s right to religious freedom but also recognizes that the Zelenskyy government’s investigations and restriction could backfire if they start to make that Church look like a martyr Church.

CWR: Roman Catholicism is relatively limited in Ukraine, primarily in those areas that had once been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.  What is the situation of Latin Catholics in Ukraine?

Burger: Though the Latin Church is indeed small in Ukraine, it is a vital part of the religious and social landscape, especially in Western Ukraine, in those lands that were once under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. But it is equally represented in the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, a consortium that includes Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims. And especially now, the Roman Catholic Church is an important part of Ukrainian society supporting the fight against Russian aggression. Roman Catholic dioceses are encountering some of the same restrictions that the Greek Catholic Church is suffering in Russian-occupied territory.

CWR: Some observers have claimed that, after independence, Ukrainians for a long time were unable to figure out if they were in the East or West.  In the early 2000s, for example, Ukrainian nationalists were harping about alleged injustices at the hands of Poles two and a half centuries ago.  After the Crimea invasion of 2014 and the ongoing Russian interference in Ukraine’s affairs, culminating in Moscow’s further invasion in February 2022, Ukrainians have managed to figure out staying in the East is a lose-lose proposition.  How do you see the problem of the “world”—East or West—to which Ukraine really belongs?

Burger: Anyone who reads the history of Ukraine can see that the country has been pulled apart in different directions over and over again. So any kind of “identity crisis” Ukrainians have suffered might well be understandable. I’m not on the ground, but we hear that this invasion has solidified Ukrainians’ resolve never to be under the aegis of Russia again. Since at least the time of the Euromaidan in 2013, we’ve heard of this strong desire to be part of the European Union. Let’s just hope that Ukraine’s embrace of the EU does not come with a selling out of traditional values regarding life, marriage and family. There’s already a legislative effort to legalize same-sex unions.

Nevertheless, His Beatitude Sviatoslav would like to see Ukraine join the EU for the sake of security. But he also considers such a move as beneficial to the EU, as Ukraine can reintroduce the European values that the EU seems to have largely forgotten. I have to believe that the values he’s thinking about are those that comport most fully with Christian values.

As much as we pray for peace in Ukraine, I believe, we should also pray that Ukraine does not go from the Russian frying pan into the fire of the “culture of death.”