'Today, in the occupied territory, there is not one Catholic priest,' Sviatoslav Shevchuk told Newsweek in an interview.
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine is exterminating religious freedom, signaling a return by Moscow to Soviet-era levels of persecution of faiths, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has said.Sviatoslav Shevchuk was in Washington D.C. this week with a delegation of his church's senior figures to express gratitude for U.S. help toward Kyiv so far, in what he described as a 'David versus Goliath' battle between Ukraine and Russia over two years of war.
'In the Soviet Union, Stalin completely destroyed our church, imprisoned all our bishops and all our priests who would not sign an agreement to become Orthodox,' added Shevchuk, who started his priestly formation at an underground seminary in the USSR.'Even in those territories where Russia were not able to come and occupy, almost 600 churches, places of worship, synagogues were destroyed.
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