2-nd ESW

Summary of the Second Ecumenical Social Week in Lviv

From October 5-11, the Second Ecumenical Social Week took place in Lviv. This event was a forum for the exchange of thoughts and ideas among Ukrainian and foreign political actors, religious leaders and representatives of the social sector. As Andriy Sadovyi, head of the Lviv City Council, stated, “the message of this Week is Social Responsibility. We need to learn to be responsible for those who are near to us. We have high expectations for the ESW. This initiative will move forward from Lviv.” This thought was also supported by Kateryna Yushchenko, the Chairman of the Board of the International Charitable Foundation Ukraine 3000. She is convinced that the ESW should become a Ukraine-wide event, at which social organizations from throughout the country could gather.

One of the major themes of this year’s ESW was “Healing the wounds of the past.” Antoine Arjakovsky, the director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies and co-director of the ESW stated that both Ukrainian and foreign guests recognized the particular importance and relevance of this theme for Ukrainians today. Participants spoke about the necessity of knowing the past for the sake of the future. In particular, speaking about genocide, Kateryna Yushchenko stated, “In these horrific years, the elite of the nation perished: scholars, politicians, the clergy, artists, those who worked the land, writers, musicians, kobzars. This was a real genocide. I often imagine what Ukraine could be like today if these terrible events had never happened. How many masterpieces could our artists have created, those artists who were united by history under the name “the executed renaissance.” What heights could our scholarship have reached. Historical data tells us that during 1933 alone 1649 scholars were erased from scholarly work because of political accusations. Hard-working, benevolent Ukrainians with sincere souls and strong traditions could today have been an agrarian nation that would feed all of Europe. If it weren’t for the war, the Holodomor, the repression, there could perhaps have been nearly 75 million of us, instead of 46.”

The next theme that was accented was “The development of social projects in cooperation with Western and Central Europe.” Three foreign charitable organizations – Communicantes (Netherlands), Kerk in Actie (Netherlands) and Renovabis (Germany) – expressed their willingness to support Ukrainian social projects.

New legislation on percentage philanthropy and on the support of nonprofit organizations by legal entities, which were prepared by the Expert Commission of the ESW over the course of the previous year, were praised and supported by Ukrainian politicians. “The prime minister supports the idea of such legislation. To hasten its acceptance, we need to get a group of deputies to work on it,” stated Stepan Kurpil, National Deputy from BYuT.

Antoine Arjakovsky, speaking about the first results of the Second Ecumenical Social Week, noted that this event is already fulfilling its role as a forum for meeting and exchanging of experience. And the participants could see this, particularly during the Forum of Social Organizations – people were immediately exchanging contact information in order to work together, gaining experience from one another.

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The Second Ecumenical Social Week in Lviv Has Begun

The ceremonial opening of the Second Ecumenical Social Week, whose slogan was “Social Responsibility,” was held on October 5 at the Lviv City Hall. Welcomes were given by the organizers of the Week: the head of the Lviv Oblast Administration Mykola Kmit; the head of the Lviv Oblast Council Myroslav Senyk; Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi; Rector of Ukrainian Catholic University Fr. Borys Gudziak; Director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies Antoine Arjakovsky; and Magdalena Bogner, board member of the Renovabis foundation.
As Fr. Borys Gudziak said, if such social weeks are important in France, in Germany, or in Poland, then in Lviv and in Ukraine the urgency of this need is obvious. “We have the opportunity to be a unique laboratory for encountering the needs of our neighbors and taking on very concrete questions, for the social fabric of Ukraine and Ukrainian life was torn and deformed. Today the most important thing is openness to one another and to God.”
“We have great expectations for the ESW. This initiative will move forth from Lviv. We need to learn to be responsible for those who are near us. This is the message of this Week – ‘social responsibility,’” stated Andriy Sadovyi.
Magdalena Bogner, a representative of the main sponsor of the event, the Renovabis foundation, believes that in Ukraine the social elite is faced with the critical task of realizing their social responsibility, just as all of us are called, depending on our individual capabilities, to find solidarity with the “weak” members of society and the disadvantaged. This means concrete love for our neighbors, mercy, and active participation towards creating a just system.
Later, as Vice President of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), Magdalena Bogner recounted the experience of organizing social weeks in Germany: how a community, particularly an association of Catholics, can influence the political and economic situation not only in their own country, but also throughout the European Union. “The Ecumenical Week is a building forum for ecumenism,” she stressed. “Our goal is to be Christian witnesses in society.”
Also emphasizing the importance of the ESW in Lviv was Antoine Arjakovsky: “As I took part in the organization of this Social Week, I can attest that we are all striving to act together to defend human dignity in Ukrainian society, and particularly in the most vulnerable branches of the population, such as the elderly, the handicapped, or those with drug or alcohol dependencies. A responsible society is a society in which the Church remembers its spiritual origins, as the Apostle Paul says.”
The role of the Church in solving social problems was also accented by Archbishop Ivan Yurkovych, whose message of greeting was read to the participants: “Our cooperation is necessary in both the economic and legal spheres, so that the international society and individual countries could work out and implement coordinated decisions in accordance with the teachings of the Church, with morality and human dignity, directed towards the solving of problems, and could create an effective legal base for economic activity.”
To conclude the first day of the Week, Natalya Fedorovych, a member of the Expert Commission of the 2nd ESW, announced the Declaration of Intentions, which confirms the introduction of legislation on percentage philanthropy.