Ukraine and Poland’s Message of Reconciliation: ‘We Forgive and Ask Forgiveness’
National Post, 21 July 2023
The words spoken this month by Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kjiv, at a joint event marking the 80th anniversary of the Volhynia massacre, were carefully chosen for their historical resonance.
KRAKÓW, Poland — While international attention on the Russian invasion of Ukraine was focused on during the NATO summit in Vilnius last week, an important reconciliation, both religious and political, took place in Warsaw, Poland, and Lutsk, Ukraine. The occasion was the 80th anniversary of the 1943 Volhynia (Volyn) massacre. President Volodymyr Zelensky and Polish President Andrzej Duda met in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk. Gathered in a Catholic cathedral, both Catholic and Orthodox prelates led prayers for reconciliation and then both presidents lit candles to honor the victims of the massacre. That the ceremony was held in a church was already something of a gracious gesture from Zelensky, who is Jewish.
The presidents jointly posted on Twitter: “Together we pay tribute to all the innocent victims of Volhynia! Memory unites us! Together we are stronger.” On his own website, Zelenskyy added: “We value every life, remember history, and defend freedom together.”
The Volhynia massacre was the work of Ukrainian nationalists, who saw in Hitler’s 1941 turn against Stalin the potential for Ukrainian independence from Moscow. They operated in Nazi-occupied Poland after 1941, cooperating with Nazi forces. In 1943 they launched a lethal attack against Polish villages. Poland puts the death toll as high as 100,000 and the atrocity remains a point of friction between Poland and Ukraine. There were reprisals by Poles against Ukrainians, with some 2,000 being killed.
Poland has been Ukraine’s most stalwart ally since the full-scale Russian invasion last year, providing military and humanitarian aid, as well as receiving millions of refugees into their own homes, all without recourse to refugee camps. It is all the more remarkable given that a century ago, in the aftermath of World War I and the return of Polish independence, Ukrainians and Poles were at war, another painful chapter in Slavic history.
The reconciliation in Lutsk is, in part, a consequence of the Russian invasion. With Russia a lethal presence in Ukraine, and Poland having only liberated itself from Moscow’s domination in 1989, both Poles and Ukrainians see afresh the need to deepen their reconciliation in the face of a common threat.
The reconciliation was not only a political act. It was grounded in the Christian injunction to be merciful and to seek mercy.
Before the meeting in Lutsk, the patriarch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kjiv, traveled to Warsaw for a meeting with Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, president of the Polish bishops’ conference. The two archbishops, representing their respective episcopates, signed a joint document of reconciliation.
In the subsequent days, Archbishops Shevchuk and Gądecki traveled to Ukraine together for memorial Masses. The principal celebrant of the Mass of reconciliation in Lutsk was Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, apostolic nuncio in Ukraine.
Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kjiv, head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, also participated in the memorial prayers in Lutsk. Ukraine is a majority Orthodox country.
“Today, here, around the throne of God in Lutsk, we hear, as believers, how heaven and earth, the living and the dead say to each other with one voice: we forgive and ask for forgiveness!” said Archbishop Shevchuk.
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