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Armenian Catholic Patriarch Visits Ukraine

12.11.2001, [14:31] // Foreign relations //

His Beatitude Nerses Bedros XIX, Patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church, visited Kyiv and the Lviv region on 30 and 31 October 2001, meeting government and religious officials. The patriarch is in Ukraine in connection with the 1700th anniversary of Armenian Christianity and the 100th anniversary of the death of Isak Isakovych, Armenian Catholic Archbishop of Lviv. He will also be visiting other historic Armenian settlements in Ukraine.

Patriarch Nerses was in Kyiv on 30 October, where he met Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, apostolic nuncio in Ukraine, and Hratch Silvanian, Armenian ambassador to Ukraine. That evening he flew to Lviv.

31 October the patriarch met with Stepan Borutskyi, head of the Lviv Regional Administration's Committee on Religious Matters. He then traveled to Truskavets (western Ukraine), where he was greeted by the bishops of the Kyiv-Halych Metropolitanate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), headed by His Beatitude Lubomyr Cardinal Husar. The bishops were holding a synod on the premises of the administrative center of the UGCC’s Sambir- Drohobych eparchy. At the end of the day, Cardinal Husar received the patriarch in his metropolitan palace at St. George’s in Lviv.

During his stay in Ukraine Patriarch Nerses will visit various Armenian communities in cities throughout Ukraine, including Khmelnytskyi, Kamianets-Podilskyi (1 November), Chernivtsi, Sniatyn, Kuty (2 November), Ivano-Frankivsk and Berezhany (3 November).

The patriarch’s Ukrainian trip, which began on 29 October, will last until 9 November.

Information was supplied by the UGCC press service, www.ugcc.org.ua.