The head of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy in Australia is praying Russia’s recent incursion into the Crimea does not signify the kind of expansionism that preceded the Second World War.
The Melbourne-based Bishop Peter Stasiuk CSsR made the comment while preaching at the local Ukrainian Catholic Parish of St John the Baptist in Maylands last Sunday where he ordained local man Richard Charlwood to the Diaconate (full story and pictures will feature in next week’s Record).
Bishop Stasiuk decried Russian legislation giving President Vladimir Putin the power to annex any part of any country where Russian-language speakers are present.
“This is a very dangerous piece of legislation,” Bishop Stasiuk told the packed Maylands church.
“The KGB killed hundreds of priests and brothers and sisters in the gulags in Siberia and we have the same character who was the head of the KGB, 20 years ago, who is trying to re-establish the Soviet Union,” Bishop Stasiuk said. Contrary to the West’s hostility to religious faith, Ukraine’s recent revolution was a “profound lesson” that faith is integral to life: “We saw hundreds of priests dressed in priestly robes praying and standing in between the guns and the people.
“Priests, in the loud speakers [at the site of anti-government demonstrations in Maidan Square] would pray the Our Father out loud. [It] forced the police to stop shooting at people and to stop beating them. It is somehow very hard to kill somebody or to hurt somebody when these people are praying,” Bishop Stasiuk said.
“In my opinion, if the priests hadn’t have been there, if this revolution had been left to politics, there would have been bodies piled high in the square where the revolution took place.”
The positive role of religion in the recent crisis was also a reminder to the Ukrainian Catholic community in Australia of the importance of religion in the face of ever increasing secularising pressures.
The absence of God was “a recipe for disaster” and “a recipe for a life which is disjointed from reality” the Bishop said.
“Today’s ordination is actually a reminder back to the fact that we are really one, body and soul. God is part of our culture. God is part of our life and it’s only when these two mix when we are complete human beings.”