Details from CNS:
Archbishop Borys Gudziak, the highest ranking Ukrainian Catholic prelate in the United States, declared during a March 5 online interview, “Morally, Ukraine has won this war.”
Russia has tried four times over the past 250 years to “extinguish” the church in Ukraine, he said.
Archbishop Gudziak, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, made the comments in an interview with George Marlin, chairman of the papal-chartered Aid to the Church in Need-USA.
The U.S.-born archbishop, who founded the Institute for Church History in Ukraine after the Iron Curtain was torn down, has headed the archeparchy since 2019 and as such is the metropolitan for Ukrainian Catholics in the United States.
“We’re very grateful that churches throughout the world are praying, and prayer is very important,” Archbishop Gudziak said in the interview, a transcript of which was furnished to Catholic News Service. “Prayer brought the Soviet Union down. It wasn’t a war, it wasn’t an army.” Many Catholic will recall being told during the 20th century to “pray for the conversion of Russia.”
There are 23 Eastern churches in communion with Rome, of which the Ukrainian Catholic Church, with 6 million members, is the largest.
“But even if there were only 60 (Catholics), the church prevails. Jesus gave a promise the gates of hell will never prevail against the church. And we saw the incredible power of a tyranny, of a totalitarian state armed to (the) teeth with nuclear weapons, with limitless resources for repression. That Soviet Union was not able to snuff out the church,” Archbishop Gudziak said.
“The Ukrainian Catholic Church was reduced from 3,000 priests to 300. Those 300 priests in the end were serving only 1% of the pre-World War II population because in the underground you can’t have big gatherings and today (the Ukrainian church) has 3,000 priests,” he continued. “Again, we see that authoritarian powers can do great damage to Christians, to Catholics — China is an example today — but the church will prevail.”
You can watch the full interview here.
