The Ukrainian Catholic Church, Catholic-Orthodox relations and the place of Christianity in contemporary Ukraine and the new Europe

Talk by HE Kyr Hlib Lonchyna, Eparch of the Eparchy of the Holy Family of London

 4.00pm on Wednesday 12th June 2013

Marie Eugenie Room, Heythrop College, University of London, Kensington Square, London W8 5HN

All are welcome. Details from Dr John Flannery - j.flannery@heythrop.ac.uk) – RSVP appreciated
www.heythrop.ac.uk - www.orientalelumen.org.uk


Kyr Hlib Boris Sviatoslav Lonchyna was born in Steubenville, Ohio, in 1954, his parents having emigrated from present-day western Ukraine after the Second World War.

In 1975 he entered the Ukrainian Studite monastery at Grottaferrata, where he was ordained to the priesthood in 1977 by the late Cardinal Josyf Slipyj. In 1979 he completed a Licentiate in Biblical Theology at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome and in 2001 a doctorate in Eastern Christian Liturgical Studies at the Pontifical Oriental Institute.

His past appointments include: St Nicholas’ Church in Passaic NJ; Prefect of Students at St. Sophia College in Rome; from 1994 Spiritual Director for the seminarians of the Greek-Catholic Major Seminary in Lviv, Ukraine; lecturer at the Theological Academy of Lviv; local assistant in the Apostolic Nunciature in Kyiv; from 2002 Auxiliary-Bishop of Lviv of the Ukrainians and titular bishop of Bareta; from 2003 Apostolic Visitor for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Faithful in Italy and Procurator of the Major-Archbishop of Lviv in Rome; from 2004 also Apostolic Visitor to Spain and the Republic of Ireland; from 2006 Head of the Patriarchal Commission for Religious Life in Ukraine; from 2009, Apostolic Administrator of the Apostolic Exarchate for the Ukrainian Faithful of the Byzantine Rite in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

In 2011 he was enthroned as the fourth Ukrainian Apostolic Exarch for the Ukrainian Catholics in the UK. The apostolic exarchate for Ukrainians in Great Britain was erected in England and Wales in 1957 and was extended to Scotland and Great Britain in 1968. In January 2013 it was established as a permanent eparchy or diocese, Kyr Hlib becoming its first eparchial hierarch, incidentally the first Catholic bishop of London since Edmund Bonner in 1559.