Eastern Expansion Strategy: Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

Abstract

After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine found itself at the very center of global geopolitical processes, as a result of which everyone witnessed an escalated confrontation between Western and East European civilizations. Confrontations that have been going on for centuries. One of the main participants in this process is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which was originally created, and subsequently used by the Vatican to advance to the East. On the one hand, in the Havana Declaration, His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Cyril and Pope Francis agreed that it is unacceptable to use inappropriate means to force believers to move from one Church to another, neglecting their religious freedom and their own traditions, and that the method «Uniatism» of previous centuries, which implies bringing one community into unity with another by separating it from its Church, is not a way to restore unity. On the other hand, Catholic outposts - new churches of the UGCC community - are already appearing on the canonical territory of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in eastern Ukraine. In September 2019, in Rome, was held the another meeting of the Synod of the UGCC.