March 30, 2001

Letters to the Editor
Globe and Mail
[email protected]

Dear Editor,

The Russian Patriarch, Pilgrim Pope stirs up 1,000-year feud (Globe and Mail, March 30, 2001), appears to have suffered a memory lapse: Ukraine is an independent country (lately from Russia) with its own hierarchies of the Ukrainian Orthodox and Catholic churches, among others and needs no foreign permission to run its affairs.

His logic would have the Archbishop of Canterbury sanction the Pope's visit to Canada or the US, both former colonies of England.

In this context, a saying from Ukraine rings very true: with Ukraine, Russia has global aspirations; without Ukraine, its a third world country. It appears that the Russian Orthodox Church, a front-runner for the KGB in Soviet times, has yet to enter the 21 century and separate its role from that of the state.

With warm regards,
Oksana Bashuk Hepburn