The Ukrainian Orthodox Church will attend the unveiling of a Ukrainian Christmas tree in Vatican

The Day has already reported that a Christmas tree from Ukraine will be erected in Vatican this year for the first time ever. (The news about the Ukrainian gift to the Holy See will obtain even more publicity as it will be mentioned by commentators from various countries during the Christmas Eve and Christmas proper masses which will be broadcast from the Apostolic See.)

The large tree to be erected at St. Peter’s Square comes from Transcarpathia, while 43 smaller ones that will decorate the Vatican Palace come from Lviv region. New details about the event include information that toys on the trees will be Ukrainian-made, too.

“We worked in concert, the regional and municipal councils, our university, the regional forest department (it approached the tree selection and ‘packaging’ tasks very seriously), and sponsors,” says Vice Rector for Administration and Development of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) Myroslav Senyk. [The UCU was in fact responsible for implementation of, so to speak, Lviv’s part of the project. – Ed.] “We are happy that this year’s Catholic Christmas will be Ukrainian-flavored. For example, 2,000 glass toys and more than 200 wooden ones on the trees will be painted with our ethnic patterns.”

According to the Religious Information Service of Ukraine’s report, the unveiling of the Christmas tree on December 16 will be attended by not just bishops of the Latin and Byzantine rite Catholic Churches of Ukraine, but also representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). The agreement about their participation was reached during the meeting between the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s Head, His Beatitude Sviatoslav (Shevchuk) and Archbishop Oleksandr (Drabynko), head of the UOC’s external relations department and representative of His Beatitude Volodymyr (Sabodan). The Dudaryk Lviv Male Choir and Christmas carol singers from Lviv will be the guests at the celebrations. They will be joined by a lot of the “new” Ukrainian emigrants in Italy and, of course, pilgrims from everywhere.