Do they know we are coming?
Do they know we are coming?
March 15, 2026
In 1991, just before the fall of the Soviet Union, I was asked by His Beatitude Metropolitan Mstyslav, of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA and Diaspora, to accompany him to Ukraine, as his secretary and assistant. His Beatitude had recently been elected to become Patriarch of the reconstituted Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Before the formal enthronement, which was held in the 10th-century St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, His Beatitude visited numerous parishes all over Ukraine, which had either recently formed or those which changed their allegiance from the only permissible Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union, the Russian Church, to the renewed Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. I was overcome with deep emotion at every stop to see what Ukrainians had prayed for was finally emerging. For over sixty years, they anticipated the resurrection of a Church that would serve not the interests of the Soviet state, but the Ukrainian people in their native language. (more…)