Major Archbishop Sviatoslav to ask Pope to grant Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church status of patriarchate

12:12

The newly elected head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), Sviatoslav Shevchuk, is planning to meet with Pope Benedict XVI and ask him to grant the UGCC the status of a patriarchate of the Roman Catholic Church.

"Today I'm departing with my bishops and all of the metropolitans of our church to Rome, because it's our duty to make a courtesy visit to the Holy Father," he said a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday.

The UGCC leader said that the UGCC Synod of Bishops had prepared a number of proposals for the Pope.

"We're really going to tell of how our church is developing and that each developing church [becomes] a patriarchate, because a patriarchate is a period in the completion of the development of a church," he said.

He said that the 20 years of Ukraine's independence had been a period of development for the UGCC.

29.03.2011