It must be remembered that our Ukrainian Greek- Catholic Church did not exist as a separate Church until the Union of Brest of 1595/1596. Its roots, as I have shared in previous issues, go back to the very beginning of Christianity in the medieval state of Rus.

In the 9th century two Byzantine Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, began missionary work in Great Moravia and Pannonia and introduced the Byzantine approach to Christianity to people in Great Moravia and Pannonia. To facilitate the spread of Christianity among Slavic people who did not speak Greek, they devised the Glagolitic or Cyrillic alphabet, a hybrid Greek alphabet, to provide a written language for the people in the region. The language they derived came to be known was Old Church Slavonic and based on their interpretation of the dialects they heard spoken. The Byzantine-Greek form of Christianity was then adopted by Prince Vladimir I of Kiev in 988.

At the time of the Great Schism (1054) the Rusyn (Ruthenian) Church took sides and stayed in union with the Byzantine Church which then become known as the Orthodox Church.

Following the Mongol   annihilation of Kiev in 1240, Metropolitan Maximos of Kiev moved to the town of Vladimir in 1299. By 1326 Metropolitan Peter of Kiev had left Vladimir to settle in Moscow and by 1328 the title of Metropolitan of Kiev became Metropolitan of Moscow. The first properly Russian Church Council of the Hundred Chapters (‘Stoglav’) in 1448 codified the separate legal tradition of the Ruthenian Church, as differentiated from the Church in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1453 there was the formal separation of the Church of Rus’ into two separate churches, the Ruthenian (Kievan) Church and Metropoliae and the Russian-Muscovite Church. The Kievan Church still remained in union with the Church of Constantinople until later in history.

This situation continued for some time and in the intervening years what is now Western and Central Ukraine came under the rule of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish king Sigismund III Vasa was heavily influenced by the ideals of the Counter Reformation and wanted   to increase the Catholic presence in Ukraine. The Counter Reformation was initiated by the Roman Church after Martin Luther’s break with the Roman Church.

Meanwhile the clergy of the Ruthenian lands were ruled from Constantinople and much of the population was loyal to Orthodoxy rather than to the Polish Catholic monarch. The Byzantine approach to the Christian faith was deeply rooted in the lands which are now Ukraine and the surrounding area. The faith of the people was formed and nurtured by Byzantine Christianity.