Ecumenism in London, or What I Did This Summer | Royal Doors

Some new friends from Canada visited us in the summer, and attended the Divine Liturgy in English at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. Here is Brent Kostyniuk's story of August's Liturgy, which was attended by a lovely group of iconographers at the end of their study day.



Ecumenism in London, or What I Did This Summer | Royal Doors



Just one slight note of correction: the Eparchy of the Holy Family of London has its own territory, which covers Great Britain, and the Cathedral parish is not a personal parish forming part of the territory of the Latin primatial diocese of Westminster's local deanery; nor is its archbishop the metropolitan for the eparchy. That said, the relations with neighbouring Latin parishes - St James' Spanish Place, the Jesuit Church of Our Lady on Farm Street, and the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham's parish at the Assumption & St Gregory - are excellent.



At Corpus Christi there is a large street procession between Farm Street and Spanish Place and for the first time this year it made a station at the doors of the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, where the Blessed Sacrament was venerated at a specially erected Holy Table, while prayers in Ukrainian and English offered for Britain and Ukraine, and Benediction in the Latin rite given before the procession made its way. The Ukrainian Cathedral Choir welcomed the Procession and the Blessed Sacrament singing beautiful hymns that moved everyone. It was a remarkable meeting of Christian East and West, marked by the integrity of the two traditions respecting each other at a moment of intense faith and devotion. In 2015, the principal officiant at the Procession will be the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Nichols, assisted by Kyr Hlib Lonchyna the eparchial bishop of the Holy Family eparchy. Kyr Hlib has the distinction of being the first Catholic bishop "of London" since the deposition of Bishop Edmund Bonner in 1559 - not of the Latin but of a Greek-Byzantine Church.