The Role of Churches in the Ukrainian Revolution

Over at ABC Religion and Ethics is a great piece on The Role of Churches in the Ukrainian Revolution, with insights about both the Ukrainian and Russian churches.

Apparently the Russians really don’t like the Greek Catholic Russians:

This mixed identity of Ukraine has horrified the Russian Empire for a long time, which prohibited the Uniate Church in Belarus during the era of Tsar Nicholas I, and then in the Soviet Union. President Vladimir Putin’s diatribe in Brussels on 28 January against the “racist and anti-Semitic Uniate priests” bears witness to the fact that the Russian secret service has not forgotten that the Greek Catholic Church was the principal force of opposition against the regime within the borders of the USSR. A few days earlier, the present head of this Church, Monsignor Sviatoslav Shevchuk, received a letter from the Minister of Culture ordering him to stop encouraging the protestors and threatening him with a total ban of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine. The bishop was not intimidated and has published this letter, explaining that it contradicts the right to protest guaranteed by the Ukrainian constitution.