His Holiness

                                                                                                                                                             Benedict XVI

                           Letter to the Holy Father (7.4.2008)

Your Holiness,

the contemplative religious sisters of the Monastery of St. Elijah the Prophet take the liberty to write to You as those who honour You as the Vicar of Christ on earth, yearn along with You for the renewal of the Church of Christ and are witnesses to the current events in Ukraine.

From the letters of the newly consecrated bishops from Pidhirtsi we know that You are well acquainted with the whole situation here – what spirit the new bishops have, what they defend and what they fight against.

Card. L. Husar, General Superior of OSBM B. Koubetch, representatives of the Ukrainian Catholic University, ... create a hateful atmosphere and publish their statements paying attention to which makes no sense, for to comment on them it is enough to mention a short passage from the breviary: “... amidst the court assembly of lawbreakers stood the ones persecuted for Christ’s sake...”

To You, Your Holiness, we write, for outwardly the situation appears in such way that all are expecting that You will decide the subsequent development of events. All believe the fate of the Pidhirtsi bishops to be now in Your hands. However, the majority do not perceive that by Your standpoint You will in fact decide not their fate but Your own as well as the fate of the present-day Church. By openly standing on the side of Christ in this time as well as by openly standing against the current heresies (historic-critical theology and respect for other religions), the Pidhirtsi bishops have already decided their fate – to them to live is Christ, and to die is gain. To condemn them means to take a side with heresy and ipso facto to exclude oneself from the Church. Should the Church condemn them, she would thus decide her own fate. Through the sound core that the Pidhirtsi bishops represent, God would have to begin the renewal in such way as through the Apostle Paul and other Apostles – outside the pharisaical structure of the existent Church, because it is impossible for Christ’s Church to become extinct.

Therefore, Your Holiness, we know that one is now not deciding the fate of the Pidhirtsi bishops at all but the fate of the present-day Catholic Church. Whether through Your mediation she will accept the renewal of life, or will not know the time of her visitation.

We pray that in this hour of darkness You draw closer to Christ hated and crucified again in His Church – for His resurrection is near!

In the truth, which is Christ,

devotedly Yours

Contemplative sisters of the Monastery of St. Elijah the Prophet

                                                                                                                         Lvov – Bryukhovychi, April 7, 2008

Address: Monastery of St. Elijah the Prophet, Shkilna 27, 79491 Lvov-Bryukhovychi, Ukraine