A report of His Beatitude Sviatoslav during the banquet on the occasion of carrying Institute Meripolitan Andrey Sheptytsky from Ottawa to Toronto University (September 28, 2016)
Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, President Mulroney, Honored Guests!
A little over two years ago we were gathered here in this very Canada Room to support the Sheptytsky Institute, while reflecting together on the still fresh events of the Revolution of Dignity in which the various faith communities of Ukraine worked together to support a nation in its struggle for civil society, rule of law and effective justice and true freedom. Ukrainian Greco-Catholics stood shoulder to shoulder with Roman Catholics, Protestants, the various Orthodox Churches of Ukraine, as well as Jews and Muslims. As the nights grew dark and the security troops gathered together with hired thugs to attack the peaceful people of the Maidan, we huddled together and we prayed. This prayer was accompanied by spontaneous acts of incredible love and generosity. While the news outlets focused on the bloodshed and its aftermath, what we saw at the maidan in Kyiv was humanity returned briefly to innocence after decades, even centuries, of brutality: people served each other, warmed each other, fed each other, donated food, clothing and various necessities without question as to who could ever reimburse them. People sang, some in tune, and others not so musically, but with enthusiasm. Young and old danced, musicians, poets and artists warmed the hearts of the freezing crowds with the fervor of beauty, channeled together not for destruction, but for the building of a more just society. What was the Church’s role in those amazing moments? Precisely to focus attention on the dignity of the children of God, to support them in their struggle, to keep them hopeful in the face of daunting odds, to encourage the noblest efforts and to restrain impassioned impulses. The Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church was proud to stand with the people in their legitimate aspirations. And thus we have stood, through the ravages of foreign occupation by an aggressive neighbor that wages hybrid war and cynically “manages” information for brutal gain. This is done in an effort to destabilize Ukraine and to maintain the lie that the democratic values and human decency for which this Revolution of Dignity has stood from the beginning are nothing more than some sort of “Jewish-Fascist-American plot” to marginalize the ascending power of the so-called “Russian World.”