Ukraine’s Best-Kept Spiritual Secret
by Victor Gaetan, Register Correspondent Tuesday, Oct 14, 2014 9:38 AM
UZHHOROD, Ukraine — There are communities in Christendom that disappear from sight but flower again, like perennials from spring ground when the weather gets warmer.
God’s truth never dies in these places, just hides to survive.
In the southwestern corner of Ukraine, there’s a wedge of beautiful, mountainous territory the size of Connecticut known as Transcarpathia, or Subcarpathian Rus.
Officially, it is Ukraine’s Zakarpattia Oblast, geographically cut off from the rest of the country by the Carpathian Mountains.
A marvelous Catholic community is centered here, in Uzhhorod, the regional capital and site of a historic Church milestone: In 1646, the Union of Uzhhorod brought most of the region’s Orthodox Church into communion with the Holy See, much as the Union of Brest did, further north, in 1596.