The top-ranking Ukrainian Catholic cleric in the United States is warning that religious minorities stand to be “crushed” if Russia gains control of Ukraine.
FILE - The Most Rev. Borys Gudziak, metropolitan archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Philadelphia for the United States, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, Tuesday, March 15, 2022. On Thursday, March 31, 2022, Gudziak, the top-ranking Ukrainian Catholic prelate in the United States, said religious minorities will be crushed if Russia gains control of Ukraine.
“What is at stake for the people of faith is their freedom to practice their faith,” Gudziak said during an online panel discussion on the war, hosted by the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University.“Ukrainian Catholics, over the last 250 years, every time there’s been a Russian occupation where they live and minister, they’ve been strangled,” he continued.
The archbishop predicted that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine — which broke from the Moscow Patriarchate and was recognized in 2019 by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople over fierce opposition from Moscow — “will undoubtedly be crushed if there’s a Russian occupation.” The U.S. State Department has similarly denounced intimidation and harassment of Tatars and other religious groups in Crimea and areas of eastern Ukraine under control of Russia-backed separatists. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said this month that Moscow's “aggression toward religious freedom is an indicator that much worse will follow ... as Russia expands into Ukraine.
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