Ukrainian Catholic leader hails Pontiff’s peacefulness, comments on Ukraine

June 03, 2025

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CWN Editor's Note: Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, spoke in a television interview about his May 15 audience with Pope Leo XIV.

“I had the feeling that I was in the presence of someone very similar to our Blessed Lubomyr, my great predecessor,” said the Major Archbishop, referring to Cardinal Lubomyr Husar (1933-2017), who led the Eastern Catholic church from 2001 to 2011, and whose beatification process has begun. “Pope Leo XIV, like Blessed Lubomyr, radiates peace. He is a person who not only speaks of peace, but who carries the peace of Christ within himself.”

Major Archbishop Shevchuk added:

I said to him: Holy Father, your memory of Ukraine—your words—immediately became a balm for our wounds. Russia is attempting to deprive us of our name, to deny Ukraine’s existence, to claim that Ukrainians are not a people with their own language, culture, traditions, and even Church, but merely a territory inhabited by anonymous natives. They wish to negotiate over this territory.

However, every time you mention Ukraine, you grant us visibility. You, as Pope, restore our name to us. And when you speak of a just peace—when you say that there is no peace without truth—you soothe our wounds. Your words lift our spirits, heal us, and return our name to us.

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