Ukrainian Catholic leader: “Russian World” an ideology dressed in church vestments

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Archbishop Shevchuk urges academics to understand "Russian World" ideology as threat to international and ecumenical relations.

In a video presentation to his alma mater in Rome, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church called on Catholic academia to study the neo-imperial ambitions of the Russian Federation.

“I urge you not to be silent,” Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv said October 19 in a report on the occasion of the start of the new academic year at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Archbishop Shevchuk, who received a doctorate in moral theology at the Angelicum in 1999, spoke about the ideology of the “Russian World,” which he said is threatening not only his nation but international political and ecumenical relations.

The Russian World theory, or Russkiy Mir, states that there is a “transnational Russian sphere or civilization, called Holy Russia or ‘Holy Rus,’ which includes Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (and sometimes Moldova and Kazakhstan), as well as ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people throughout the world,” according to a declaration drafted by the Orthodox Christian Studies Centerat Fordham University. “It holds that this ‘Russian world’ has a common political center (Moscow), a common spiritual center (Kyiv as the ‘mother of all Rus’), a common language (Russian), a common Church (the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate), and a common patriarch (the Patriarch of Moscow), who works in ‘symphony’ with a common president/national leader (Putin) to govern this Russian world, as well as upholding a common distinctive spirituality, morality, and culture.”

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Ukrainian Catholic leader: "Russian World" an ideology dressed in church vestments