The following four documents are of vital importance not just to the Ukrainian Catholic Church, but also at the Roman Catholic Church. The principal subject matter of these documents is the so-called Lviv Synod of 1946, during which the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ukraine was liquidated by the Soviet regime and its members coerced to join the Russian Orthodox Church. The first two documents are a letter written by Patriarch Pimen of Moscow to Pope John Paul II and the Pope’s reply to that letter. The other two are «The Solemn Repudiation of the Legality of the So-Called Lviv Synod» issued by the bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which provoked the letter exchange between the Holy Father and the Muscovite Patriarch, and the «Declaration» issued by His Beatitude Patriarch Yosif Slipyj concerning this letter exchange. Inasmuch as the Ukrainian press as well as our journal have commented widely on these documents, particularly on the letters of the Pope and the Muscovite Patriarch, the editors of «The Patriarchate» have decided to publish these documents together in one issue, so as to provide our readers with their complete texts. Our source of the first two documents is the «Information Bulletin» of the Moscow Patriarchate External Church Relations Department, No. 4, April 8, 1981. The documents of the Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy have been published widely in the Ukrainian emigre’ press. All these documents have been translated for «The Patriarchate» by Prof Leonid Rudnytzky, La Salle College, Philadelphia, Pa., and Prof. Thomas EBird, Queens College, New York, N. Y. whose courtesy we herewith acknowledge.
The Editors
THE SOLEMN REPUDIATION OF THE LEGALITY OF THE SO-CALLED LVIV SYNOD OF 1946
The Divine Savior founded His Church as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. Our ancestors received the Christian faith in the times of St. Volodymyr, when the Church was not divided when it was still under the single supreme leadership of the Vicar of Christ, the Pope of Rome. The Church in Western Ukraine was and has remained within this Catholic unity until our own times, having its own metropolitan and its bishops as successors to the Apostles, who, in unity with the person of the Universal Pontiff, lead and protect the flock entrusted to them.
This catholic unity was much cherished by the Ukrainian Church and at the gathering of its bishops in Brest in 1596, it decided to renew and strengthen this holy union with the Apostolic See and considered this holy union accomplished because within a short time, all the Ukrainian bishops and eparchies of the wide Kiev Metropolia joined this union.
The Lviv gathering, which illegally called itself a sobor (council) forcefully introduced by the secular authorities in 1946, could not be and was not a legal council of our Church because not a single bishop of the Ukrainian Church participated in it and the presence of priests and laymen is not enough for the legality and canonical validity of a real council; and even more so, since the participation of those few was the result of outright violence.
The Universal Pontiff, Pope Pius XII, condemned this illegal act in his encyclical Orientates omnes of December in which he even stated the names of those most guilty for the destruction of the Church in Ukraine. Later, our Holy Father, Pope Pius XII came to the defense of our suffering once more, namely, with the solemn declaration of December 15, 1952; and more recently Pope John Paul II, in his declarations of March 19, 1979 and February 5, 1980, made known to the entire world that the Ukrainian Catholic Church exists and is alive.
Thus, the Apostolic See has affirmed several times the lack canonicity and the invalidity of the so-called Lviv Synod of 1946 and has condemned this historical deception.
We, Ukrainian bishops, gathered around His Beatitude, our Father and Head, Patriarch Josyf, Archbishop of Lviv, Metropolitan of Kiev and Halych, and his future successor, Archbishop-Coadjutor Myroslav, having come together with the blessings of His Holiness, the Supreme Pontiff, Pope John Paul II, herewith declare to all members of the clergy, monastic orders, and to all our faithful in Ukraine and in their settlements all over the world, that a sobor or a synod of our Church, during which our Church would sever its Union with the Apostolic See of Rome never existed and that the so-called «Lviv Sobor of 1946» had nothing and has nothing in common with our Ukrainian Church, which was and is a faithful member of the Universal Church, the Mystical body of Christ, whose visible head on earth is the Holy Father, the Pope of Rome, the successor of the Apostle Saint Peter, and the Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Josyf
Patriarch and Cardinal
and the Synod of Bishops of the Autonomous [«Pomisna»] Ukrainian Catholic Church
Given at Rome At the grave of the Supreme Apostles Peter and Paul
On the Second of December 1980 A.D.
