Andy Hunder: Ukraine’s forbidden Church marks 25 years of freedom
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuck, head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church blesses the water in the Dnieper river in Kiev on Aug. 18, 2013 during the Rite of the Blessing of the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.
25 years ago I belonged to the single largest banned religious community in the world. The Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church was, until December 1989, the most sizeable officially banned religious organisation, persecuted by Soviet authorities for 43 years. The Church, somewhat miraculously, managed to survive "underground," in the Gulags, in exile outside the USSR, and clandestinely across Western Ukraine.
