Some interesting comments from Radio Free Europe today:
As he looked out from the window of his Vatican study at the crowd below, the pontiff acknowledged the Ukrainians and although he didn’t mention the country’s postelection turmoil specifically, made it fairly clear which side the Holy See was on.
“My thoughts go to the Ukrainian pilgrims present in this square,” the pope said on 28 November. “I assure you of my prayer for peace in your country.”
It was the second time in four days that John Paul made a point of singling out Ukraine. On 24 November, he promised a group of Ukrainians, who were among thousands in the Vatican’s Paul VI auditorium for a papal audience, that he was “praying in a special way for your beloved homeland.”
Throughout the election campaign, the pro-Moscow branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church also made its preference clear.
In demonstrations in Kyiv in November, the Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods of Ukraine warned of “the expansion of Catholics and sects in Ukraine” should the West-leaning Yushchenko win the presidency. Leaflets distributed in Orthodox parishes called Yushchenko a “partisan of the schismatics and an enemy of Orthodoxy,” according to media reports. And opposition leaders and human rights groups allege that some clergy in heavily Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine told parishioners to vote for “God’s candidate,” the pro-Moscow Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, or be denied the sacraments.
The standoff over Ukraine’s election has been characterized variously as a struggle for democracy, a Cold War-style showdown between Moscow and the West, and a cultural conflict between the country’s Russian and Ukrainian speakers. “Obviously, each religious community is trying to gain its own advantage from the result of this election.” - Corley
Although Yushchenko and Yanukovych are both Orthodox Christians, the “Orange Revolution” has also highlighted Ukraine’s enduring, centuries-old religious schisms that continue to play an important role in the multiconfessional nation of 48 million people.
This is true despite the fact that Ukraine’s churches are prohibited from campaigning for either candidate.
“Ukraine, of all the former Soviet republics, is the one that probably has the most religious splits,” Felix Corley, a specialist on religious issues in the former Soviet Union, told the BBC World Service. “The religious picture is very fractured [and] this is being reflected in the political arena as well,” Corley added…
But despite their small numbers, the Catholic denominations have provided bedrock support for the pro-Yushchenko opposition.
“The ecclesiastical authorities are not supposed to take a stand in this crisis,” the Reverend Oleksandr Hoursky, a Roman Catholic priest, told the “International Herald Tribune,” before proceeding to do exactly that.
“The church supports good against evil, the protection of human rights, and the end of any injustices, corruption, the state abuse of power,” Hoursky said. “Personally, I hope Yushchenko becomes president.”
Uniates are slightly less inhibited. On Kyiv’s Independence Square, young Uniate priests and nuns consistently drew warm cheers when they walked past orange-clad demonstrators, according to press reports.
“At the root of the crisis remains an immoral regime that has deprived Ukrainian people of their legitimate rights and dignity,” Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the head of the Uniate Church, said on 6 December, a day before he met with Pope John Paul in the Vatican. Husar called the electoral standoff “the product of two clashing world visions as well as the selfish protection of personal interest on behalf of those who are currently in government.”
And those clashing world visions go back more than five centuries, reflecting the struggle for influence in Ukraine between Russia and the West.
The Uniate Church was established in 1596 when Metropolitan Mikhail Rohoza of Kyiv and other Orthodox bishops signed the Union of Brest, pledging allegiance to the Vatican but retaining Eastern rites and religious practices. The move was an attempt to move closer politically, religiously, and culturally to the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth, which ruled the western part of Ukraine at the time. But not everybody in the Orthodox Church hierarchy agreed with the union with Rome, and some formed a rival church hierarchy, which by 1686 was formally under the authority of the Orthodox Church’s Moscow…"
rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/12/4ed21a9a-2e59-440b-b58b-f98c5f5a2d2f.html
