Major Archbishop Shevchuk shares how U.S. Catholics helped resurrect Ukraine’s Church and sustain its people through war and faith.
Newsroom (18/02/2026 Gaudium Press) Each year on Ash Wednesday, Catholics across the United States unite in a quiet act of solidarity — the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe. The initiative supports communities across the former Soviet bloc, where decades of communist repression sought to extinguish faith itself. For Ukraine, the impact of that annual collection has been nothing short of resurrection.
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the father and head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), recently reflected on how this support helped his Church emerge from the underground, rebuild its presence, and now, minister to a people wounded by war.
A Church Reborn from the Underground
“The collection helped in the resurrection of the martyred and crucified Church in Ukraine,” Archbishop Shevchuk said. As a son of the underground Church and a former seminarian within it, he remembers the era when priests risked prison or worse for simply celebrating the Divine Liturgy.
When the UGCC was forced underground after its official “liquidation” in 1946, faith survived in secret — in homes, forests, and whispered prayers. The Church reemerged in 1989 with few institutions intact but with unbroken conviction. “Because of this worldwide solidarity,” Shevchuk said, “you helped us not only to come forth from the catacombs, but to rebuild our very presence in Ukrainian society.”
Funds from the USCCB collection supported the restoration of churches, the formation of clergy and laity, and the creation of seminaries such as Kyiv’s Three Holy Hierarchs Seminary, which Shevchuk now oversees. That formation, he explained, is the foundation for true pastoral care — the ability to minister not just through rituals, but through compassion. “In the Soviet Union, priests were trained only to celebrate liturgically, not to take care of the people. That is a big difference.”
Freedom as a Spiritual Virtue
Emerging from communism, Ukrainian Catholics were not merely rebuilding structures, they were nurturing freedom itself. “Only the Church can teach the people how to be free,” Shevchuk emphasized. For him, freedom is not the absence of oppression but a virtue of the soul. The Church, reborn and strengthened through international generosity, taught Ukrainians to live authentically and to trust one another again after decades of fear.
Those lessons, he noted, became indispensable after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Years earlier, as the Church promoted volunteer initiatives in the 1990s, it sowed the early seeds of the same resilient civic spirit now visible in Ukraine’s nationwide volunteer movements. “In the Soviet Union, there were no volunteers,” he said. “Free initiative was punished. But when the war erupted, we saw an explosion of volunteerism. The Church was a mother who gave birth to those movements.”
Living out Catholic Social Teaching
For Archbishop Shevchuk, the USCCB collection reflects the very essence of Catholic social teaching — the dignity of the person expressed through solidarity. “It’s not only a theoretical endorsement,” he said, “but the incarnation of those principles in concrete society.” Totalitarian systems thrive by suffocating initiative; faith, by contrast, liberates. “Our heavenly Father is a God of liberty,” he noted, recalling the words of Moses to Pharaoh: “Let my people go.”
Through acts of generosity, American Catholics have not simply supported a distant Church — they have become co-workers in renewing the moral and civic fabric of Ukraine. “When one member of the body suffers, the whole body suffers,” Shevchuk reminded. “We are not only recipients of humanitarian aid. We are members of the same Body of Christ.”
The Mutual Gift of Solidarity
The Archbishop described this relationship as a two-way exchange — materially and spiritually. “We too have much to share with you,” he told U.S. Catholics. “Freedom is not free. What Ukraine is telling you today is that freedom must be guarded — not taken for granted.”
For him, every act of giving radiates a spiritual reciprocity. “The more you give, the more you will receive from God,” he said. This truth, embodied in every Eucharistic celebration, transforms the annual collection from a financial appeal into a sacramental act of thanksgiving. “Because of those benefits we have received from God,” Shevchuk concluded, “we are able to assist and help others.”
In the ashes of persecution and amid the trials of war, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church stands today as a living testament to that truth — a Church resurrected from the catacombs, sustained by faith, and strengthened by global communion.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from OSV
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