With the blessing of His Beatitude Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine Volodymyr the staff member of the Department for External Church Relations priest Mykolay Danylevych stayed in Milan (Italy) from January 6 till 11, where he assisted the rector of the parish of St.Ambrose, protopriest Mykolay Makar in performing the Nativity services for the large Ukrainian Orthodox Diaspora of the city.
During the Nativity Divine
services in the parish of St.Ambrose of Milan about 350 Orthodox believers prayed,
the most part of whom were Ukrainians, as well as Moldavians, Russians,
Bulgarians and even Orthodox Italians.
For all that the parish has
only recently received into operation the premises of the catholic church,
where the catholic services have not been performed for a considerable period
of time, so most of our fellow-countrymen do not know about this church. "Father rector is a unique priest" -fr.
Mykolay Danylevych shares his impressions, - "For the first year of his ministry in Italy he learnt Moldavian and now not
only the numerous Ukrainian Diaspora members, but also Moldavians and Russians
assemble around him. In the person of this priest I see real
embodiment of the missionary principle of Apostle Paul, who, preaching the
Gospel, unto the Jews became as a Jew. "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (1 Corinthians 9: 22).
Protopriest Mykolai Makar
was sent to serve to Italy in 2006 chiefly for the pastoral
care of the numerous Ukrainian Orthodox Diaspora (Journal No. 12 of the Holy
Synod of the ROC of April 11, 2006). Previously he bore obedience of
the assistant principal of the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary. "For some time the
Orthodox community of Milan had no place for the divine
service. They often had to serve outdoors in the parks where our
fellow-countrymen gathered." - tell fr. Mykolay Makar. However, at the beginning of 2007 the
community received the premised of a catholic temple in operation, and the
number of parishioners has been constantly growing since. "The main problem to
be solved is an extreme necessity of Orthodox priests, because I'm not coping
here by myself. Apart from Milam there
are numerous organised Orthodox communities in the
neighbour cities, in which the plurality are native Ukrainians."
According to official
statistics about 30.000 of Ukrainian legally live in Milan. No one knows how many of them stay there
illegally. By estimations of the specialists the number of Ukrainians who live
and work in Italy has exceeded 1 million.
Furthermore, the bigger part of them, at least two thirds are Orthodox
believers. For the most part these are the natives of Western Ukraine, which are notable for the high
level of enchurchment. As for Milan, in this city the natives of the Chernivtsi
region prevail, which are notable not for only their enchurchment, but for their devotedness to the
canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The trip of fr. Mykolay Danylevych is agreed with Archbishop
of Korsun Innokentiy who is the administrator of the parishes of the Russian
Orthodox Church in Italy, since in this country the Bogorodsk Diocese of the ROC has been
recently established, but no bishop appointed yet.
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