UKRAINE?S GREEK Catholic Church, which combines the eastern liturgy with loyalty to Rome, has confirmed it will move its headquarters from the western city of Lviv to a new cathedral in Kiev later this month, despite repeated Russian Orthodox warnings that the reorganisation will damage inter-Church ties.

?Our synod took this decision in October 2004 according to its canons ? it wasn?t approved by the Pope,? Mgr Hlib Lonchyna, the Church?s Vatican representative, told the Swiss Catholic Apic news agency. ?The Orthodox consider Kiev their canonical territory. But you can?t say one territory is solely for the Orthodox and another for Catholics. Wherever the faithful are there should also be priests and bishops.?

Russia?s Orthodox Church has urged Greek Catholics not to relocate their metropolitan see to Kiev, which is also home to three rival Orthodox denominations, the largest loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate. In a late June resolution, the Church?s Holy Synod said Orthodox-Catholic relations remained ?tense?, despite ?encouraging statements? by Pope Benedict, adding that the planned move was ?inadmissible from a canonical, ecclesiological and pastoral viewpoint?. It added that the Church?s foreign relations director, Metropolitan Kirill, had criticised the ?expansion of Catholics in Ukraine? during a June meeting with the Vatican?s Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and had also attacked calls for the head of the Greek Catholic Church, Cardinal Lubomir Husar, Archbishop of Lviv, to be raised to the rank of patriarch.

However, Orthodox criticisms were dismissed as ?irrelevant? in a statement by Cardinal Husar, who said his Church had never renounced its claim to be based in Kiev. ?The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, dependent on the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in communion with the Pope of Rome are two totally different Churches, despite their common origin,? the cardinal added. ?These two Churches occupy the same territories geographically, but not canonically, since there is no canonical communion between them. Therefore, their co-existence has no ecclesiological or canonical obstacles.?
Jonathan Luxmoore, Warsaw

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