Sviatoslav Shevchuk (born 1970)
Born 1970 CE.
Sviatoslav Yuriyovych Shevchuk (Ukrainian: Святослав Юрійович Шевчук; born 5 May 1970) is a Ukrainian Catholic prelate who has served as the Major Archbishop of Kyiv–Galicia and Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) since 25 March 2011. At the time he was born, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was illegal under the Soviet Union. His parents and grandparents were devout Catholics and active in the Underground Church. He recalled that on a family trip to the Orthodox shrine of Pochaev around 1985, he prayed before an icon of the Theotokos, expressing his desire to become a priest. A couple of years later, while studying medicine in the city of Boryslav, he began to attend a secret seminary in Yaremche, in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. He completed his mandatory military service as a field medic, based in Eastern Ukraine. In the waning days of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was legalized again, and Shevchuk was able to complete his seminary studies in a reopened seminary in Lviv. In August 1991, at the direction of his superiors, he moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to study philosophy.
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