Religion in the Process of Nation-Building in Ukraine: Case Study on the UGCC and Military Chaplaincy

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.20.2023.83.05

Keywords:

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, military chaplaincy, Ukrainian army, Ukraine: nation-building process, Ukraine: collective memory

Abstract

Priests of various faiths have tried to accompany Ukrainian soldiers as military chaplains since the very beginning of the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Finally, the Ukrainian parliament regularized the status of the military chaplaincy adopting a relevant law. Analyzing the process of shaping the chaplaincy allows us to better understand the place of religious communities and religion itself in the social life of post-Soviet Ukraine. It also allows for an examination of the nation-building process from a different and very interesting perspective. The article consists of three parts. The first one briefly presents the process of institutionalizing the military service of priests in Ukraine. In the next part, the significance of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s (UGCC) special activity in the field of military chaplaincy is demonstrated. The third part attempts to explain the reasons why the UGCC, despite a number of objective limitations, plays the leading role in the sphere of chaplaincy in Ukraine.

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Author Biographies

  • Michał Wawrzonek, Ignatianum University in Cracow

    Professor in Jesuit University in Cracow, graduated in the Ukrainian philology (1997) and political science (2000) from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. PhD form the same university in 2003 on the basis of dissertation on Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky ecumenical activity in Ukraine and Russia (published in Rome in 2006 in Ukrainian). Habilitation conferred in 2016 for the thesis Religion and Politics in Ukraine: The Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches as Elements of Ukraine’s Political System (published in 2014 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Coauthor of the book Orthodoxy Versus Post-Communism? Belarus, Serbia, Ukraine and the Russkiy Mir (with Nelly Bekus and Mirella Korzeniewska-Wiszniewska) published in 2016. Author of several articles in East European Politics, Societies and Cultures, Journal of Ukrainian Studies, Схід/Захід, Український Історичний Журнал, Baltic Worlds, Politeja.

  • Tomasz Szyszlak, University of Wrocław

    PhD in political science (2009). He works at the Department of Eastern Studies at the Institute International of Studies (University of Wrocław). He studied ethnology and international relations at University of Wrocław. Author of several dozen scientific works, including the monograph Lwowskie sacrum, kijowskie profanum. Grekokatolicyzm w ukraińskiej przestrzeni publicznej od pierestrojki do pomarańczowej rewolucji (Warsaw 2012). Editor-in-Chief of journal Wschodnioznawstwo (ISSN 2082-7695), as well as a member of the editorial board of the magazine Культурологічний вісник published in Zaporizhia (ISSN 2413-2284). Guest lecturer at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, at universities in the Czech Republic, on Lithuania, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, as well as at the Faculty of Theology of the University in Opole as part of postgraduate studies “Peaceful Conflict Resolution. Ecumenical paths of Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation.”

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Published

23-08-2023

Issue

Vol. 20 No. 2(83) (2023): Rok 1991 i przemiany na obszarze postsowieckim

Section

Religion

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

“Religion in the Process of Nation-Building in Ukraine: Case Study on the UGCC and Military Chaplaincy”. 2023. Politeja 20 (2(83): 89-117. https://doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.20.2023.83.05.