You can hear a lot if you listen to God and try to understand how a person can build a new culture and civilization in a new way. The key to building a “new world” is the commandment of love, which renews those who practice it and who live by it.
This request was made by Father and Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church His Beatitude Sviatoslav during the Open Church program on Zhyve TV. Sonia Koshkina, editor-in-chief of the online publication Livyj Bereh, took part in the conversation.
Speaking about the reasons why and for what God allowed the situation with the pandemic, the Primate of the UGCC admitted that he does not have an answer to this question. However, he urged everyone to ask God about this every day, listen to His voice, and try to understand what He wants to tell us.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav shared his own thoughts on the cause of the coronavirus pandemic.
“If we analyze the situation with the virus,” says the Head of the Church, “we begin to see that we are living in a period of fundamental and global cataclysms and changes. The ecological crisis in the world is the basis for the mutation of this virus. We don’t know if there will be another pandemic in the world after we overcome the coronavirus.”
“Today we feel a deep shock in nature. There is a feeling that nature is beginning to defend itself against man. That is why it is important for us to rethink our attitude to the environment very seriously,” he said.
He also added: “Perhaps this will also help us today to rethink global relations between different political centers and, finally, to stop fighting each other. Stop investing in weapons.”
The Head of the Church drew attention to the fact that to this day Ukraine is at the epicenter of a new geopolitical game and is suffering from war.
He also drew attention to the global consequence of the pandemic – the economic crisis. “We see that the sanitary crisis is creating an economic crisis. There is a lot of talk about the recession of the world economy, which may be worse than in the early twentieth century. We need to build a more harmonious economic system in the world. It is important for us to understand how to distribute our resources equitably,” he said.
“I was very concerned about the statement of one of the UN spokesmen, who spoke about the dangers of world hunger. It says that there may be a famine on a biblical scale. We must hear not only those suffering from coronavirus, but also those who suffer from the unfair distribution of resources in the world,” stressed the Father and Head of the UGCC.
The UGCC Department for Information