Ukraine is sending its greatest delegation ever to a gathering of politically influential Christian leaders in Washington this week, trying to present a discussion that protecting religious freedom is a strong reason to continue US aid to resist aggression Russian.
The Ukrainian shepherds, the members of the Parliament and the military chaplains who will participate in the national breakfast of prayer say that they hope that the message of fighting religious persecution will resonate with the officials of the Trump administration and the members of the congress that will surely be there.
The Brea di Prayer, a great event on the Washington social calendar since 1953, presents an opportunity for company managers, religious and diplomatic leaders to the jockey for access to influential choreligionists in the government to influence policies. While the meeting is open to all faiths, its purpose, according to its website, is gathering in the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth “.
The Ukrainians will support those who have gathered that further Russian progress would expand an area of repression of different Christian denominations, as well as the destruction and looting of the churches and the arrests of shepherds and priests – actions that the rights groups have documented in areas already Under Russian occupation.
“Russia does not kill only people, not only destroys our cities – Russia also destroys and forbids religious communities” in the areas under its control, said Roman Lozynskyi, a member of Parliament with the opposition Holos party.
Lozynskyi is a member of the Greek Catholic Church, part of a branch known as the Catholicism of the Eastern rite that follows the Vatican, which is persecuted in parts of Ukraine held by the Russian. He recalled the deportation of a friend and a Greek Catholic priest in the city of Melitopol held by the Russian as an example of the suppression of Catholic congregations under employment.
More than 100 Ukrainian, politicians, military chaplains and priests, including the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Epiphae of the Metropolitan, are in Washington for the prayer breakfast on Thursday and the events related during the week, said Pavlo Unguryan , former member of Parliament, organize the Ukrainian effort.
Ukrainian Orthodox priests and parishes are among the objectives of Eastern Ukraine. It is estimated that 50 priests in the territories occupied by Russia-Tract to whom the older church official in Kherson, who has refused to join the Russian Orthodox Church, were killed in the last three years, I have said in an Epifanius metropolitan interview. Other priests have been forced to start or celebrate the secret.
The Ukrainians also intend to highlight the difficult situation of the Evangelicals, said Unguryan, who is Battista. Within its borders, Russia has targeted the evangelical investigations and arrested Jehovah’s witnesses. Repression extends to occupied Ukraine.
“Ukraine is the center of the belt of the Bible of Europe,” said Unguryan and expressions of evangelical faith are now threatened. About one million Ukrainians attend the evangelical services weekly, he said.
Russia occupies about 19 percent of the Ukrainian territory and is gaining slow but constant gains. Ukraine is defending himself in fierce trench fighting a front of about 600 miles along a front.
“A part of this war is spiritual,” said Unguryan. “It is important for America to know.”
Ukrainians who attend breakfast of prayer want to show the vitality of Christian churches in the country, where about 70 percent of the population states that religious in polls.
The effort aims to sway the supporters of Mr. Trump, who expressed skepticism for the heavy military and financial aid of the Biden administration in Ukraine. This week Trump said that continuous aid could be exchanged with US access to Ukrainian minerals.
Previous religious sensitive in the United States have already produced results for Ukraine.
Last summer, the home’s speaker, Mike Johnson, held a video address to a Christian gathering in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Battists appealed to him for military and diplomatic support for their country. Johnson is a South Baptist who has put his conservative Christian faith in the center of his political career.
The Ukrainian churches and the country’s parliament have sent delegations to breakfast since the early 2000s, but in recent years they have increased participation, calling the annual visit “Ukraine Week” in Washington. In past years several dozen religious and political leaders have presented themselves. The greatest delegation this year, said Unguryan, is in recognition of the importance of Christianity for many supporters of Mr. Trump.
“These are absolutely important issues that can unite Ukraine, a very conservative and Christian country, with a very conservative Christian America,” said Unguryan, who has promoted conservative social policies in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Protestant shepherds offered themselves widely as military chaplains during the war, he said in an interview Liudmyla Filipovych, a Ukrainian scholar of religion. Ukrainian evangelicals have opened about 100 churches in other European countries to provide services in Ukrainian to the country’s refugees, he said.
Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin has put aside the churches outside of what the Kremlin has defined the four “traditional” religions: Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. Russia is in a list of the United States government of “countries of particular concern” to limit freedom of religion.
In the territory occupied in East and South Ukrainian churches, Catholic and Protestants face “threats, interrogations and arbitrary arrests”, according to a report published in January by Mission Eurasia, a group that promotes evangelical Christianity in former Soviet states.
“The Russian employment authorities also widely engaged in illegal imprisonment and convictions for manufactured accusations of extremism, torture and even murder,” says the report. He described cases of closing and looting of the churches and removing their crosses. Overall, the invasion of Russia destroyed, damaged or brought to the looting of at least 630 religious sites, says the report.
The visit of Metropolitan Epifanio to Washington is part of his efforts to win the international recognition of his Church and the support of religious leaders for his position against Russia. His church won independence in 2019 from the Russian Orthodox Church, but some congregations continued to follow the hierarchy of Moscow.
Last year, Ukraine prohibited the Orthodox branch in line with the Russian Church, attracting criticism from the Kremlin and Pope Francis. Ukrainian officials said that restrictions were necessary, since some priests served as Russian spies or encouraged the congregates to pray for the head of the Russian Church, who blessed the invasion.
“The Russian Church has tried to block our activity abroad and are trying to unlock it, because the Church is one of the most important elements for the future of the existence of the Ukrainian state”, Metropolitan Epifanius, leader of the Ukrainian Church, said in an interview in December in Rome. “We are trying to destroy these blocks, saying the truth, because the truth destroys the walls.”
Recently, he preached that message to all religious leaders he can reach. He says he speaks regularly with the ecumenical patriarch Bartolomeo I of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christians in the world.
With discussions that run among western officials on how to negotiate the end of the war, Metropolitan Epiphanius said that the result for Ukraine was unpredictable, but left few doubts about his hopes for the fate of Ukraine.
“We believe that God could create the miracle, the same that created a miracle for Syria, and Assad left Syria,” he said. “We ask everyone the spiritual weapons, the prayers.”