Two Ukrainian Catholic churches in Lancashire have been listed as part of celebrations for the Eurovision Song Contest.
The Church of the Dormition of the Holy Mother of God in Salford and the Church of Sts Peter and Paul and All Saints in Oldham have been listed Grade II by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, alongside a Ukrainian memorial in Bradford.
The Church of the Dormition was the first church owned by the Ukrainian Catholic community in the UK.
They purchased the nineteenth-century Sunday school building in 1954 and it was designated the Ukrainian Catholic “mother church” prior to the establishment of an eparchy in Great Britain.
In Oldham, the Ukrainian Catholic parish of Sts Peter and Paul acquired the Anglican All Saints’ Church in 1987.
A year later, the Ukrainian Community Memorial was unveiled in Bradford’s North Bierley Municipal Cemetery, marking the millennium of Christianity in Ukraine. (St Vladimir, the Prince of Kyiv, invited missionaries to his realm in 988.)
The memorial, an obelisk with a relief carving of the Tryzub (“Trident”) Cross, also commemorates those who died for Ukraine in wars.
Fr Taras Khomych, a Ukrainian Catholic priest in Liverpool who chairs the city’s branch of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, said that the listings were “a wonderful way of supporting our heritage at a time when once again, it is under threat in Ukraine”.
“This is welcome recognition of the role that culture and tradition play in safe-guarding our way of life,” he said.
Fr Khomych has also been involved in arrangements for the Eurovision Song Contest, which Liverpool is hosting on behalf of Urkaine.
Ukrainian immigrants have been recorded in the UK since the late nineteenth century, particularly in the industrial towns of the English north and midlands.
The diaspora had a significant role in preserving Ukrainian identity in the years of Soviet rule in their homeland. The Church of the Dormition has a plaque commemorating the seven million victims of the Holodomor – the 1932-33 famine engineered by Stalin’s regime.
Alongside the new listings, Historic England has updated the records for other buildings to note their Ukrainian history.
These include St Chad’s Catholic Church in Manchester, where the city’s Ukrainian Catholic community worshipped before moving to the Church of the Dormition in 1954, and the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Most Holy Trinity & Our Lady of Pochaiv in Bradford.
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