WHEN:

17 November 2017, 3-5pm

WHERE: 

Committee Room G, House of Commons, Houses of Parliament

Admission:

This event is free but registration is required. Please register here.

Language:

In English.

Patriarch Josyp Slipyj, the leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, was theology professor, education administrator, former GULAG prisoner, church reformer and missionary. His achievements in each of these domains are remarkable to us today. Not only was he a scholar, but he was also a driving force behind intellectual and cultural institutions, rising up to challenges of Nazism, Communism and post-modernism. In the course of 18 years of his imprisonment, he has challenged totalitarianism head-on, its ideology and practice. When kicked off the Soviet Union as an old man, Slipyj did not take retirement but set about creating institutions and inspiring divided Ukrainian community across continents. His academic and spiritual legacy provides interesting insights on today’s burning issues: growing political populism, modern propaganda and “post-truth”, dilemmas of economic migration and refugee crisis. As Ukraine marks the 125th birth anniversary of the Patriarch – an ordinary boy stemming from a peasant family in Ternopil, Bishop Borys Gudziak shares his insight and personal recollection of the time spent with the Patriarch in the 1980s in Rome and offers his vision for the future.

Speaker’s biography:

Bishop Borys Gudziak is the President of the Ukrainian Catholic University with which the Ukrainian Institute in London is afficiated. Dr. Borys Gudziak as Apostolic Exarch for Ukrainians in France. Fr. Borys Gudziak was born in Syracuse, New York (USA) in 1960 and was ordained a priest in 1998. He received his doctorate in Byzantine and Slavic studies from Harvard University and is the author of numerous academic works.

The full biography of Bishop Borys Gudziak could be found here