Greeting Address by His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr
Ukrainian Orthodox Church
Greeting Address by His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr on the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Revival of Kyiv Theological Schools and the 190th Anniversary of Reorganization of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy into Kyiv Theological Academy
Your Eminence, the Most Reverend Vladyka Rector!
Dear teachers and students of the Kyiv Theological Schools, participants and guests of the International Academic Workshop Conference
“Theological and Secular Education: History of Interrelations, Modernity and Perspectives”!
The Kyiv Theological Schools are almost 400 years old, but today we celebrate their 20th anniversary. 20 years ago, after the celebration of 1000 years of the Baptism of Rus the spiritual revival of our people began, following the decades of the atheist power reign. One of the signs of such a revival was opening of the Kyiv Theological Seminary in 1989. But apart from this joyous event it is important to recall today a sorrowful date – this year is the 90th anniversary of closing of the Kyiv Theological Schools by the soviet power.
The ones whose age draws near the sorrowful date, related to closing of the theological schools, understand well what the teachers and students of the Academy and Seminary had to come through in the 20th century. It was an experience of Golgotha, of death and descending to hell. But 20 years ago we had experienced a paschal joy of Resurrection.
20 years is an average age of our students. In other words, today’s students are contemporaries of the restored educational establishment. And looking at them we can understand the present state of the Kyiv Theological Schools. On the one hand, it is youth and lack of experience. On the other hand, it is faith and desire. It is the faith and desire to serve the Mother-Church that we, the people of elder age, see in the eyes both of the students and the administration, teachers and pedagogues of the Kyiv Theological Schools. And it gives us hope for the future and the certainty that the undertaking of archimandrite Yelisey (Pletenetskyi) of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, whose 385th anniversary of repose we mark this year, of hetman Petro Konashevych Sagaydachny and the founder of the school Galshka Gulevychivna, of the Holy Hierarch Petro (Mohyla) and the Holy Hierarch Dimitry (Tuptalo), whose 300th anniversary of the blessed repose we have marked recently, of archpriests Theodore Titov and Alexander Hlaholev, of teachers and students of different ages starting from the age of the orthodox brotherhoods in the 17th century till the new martyrs and confessors of the 20th century is in the reliable hands.
Greeting the organizers and participants of the today’s conference, dedicated to “Theological and Secular Education: History of Interrelations, Modernity and Perspectives”, I’d like to state that the Kyiv Theological Academy is not only the first higher educational establishment of the Russian Orthodox Church, but the first higher educational establishment of Ukraine. We have got almost 400-years’ history of relations of the theological and secular education. Unfortunately, the modernity is that the spiritual successor of the Kyiv Brotherhood School – the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary, and the secular successor of the glorious Kyiv-Mohyla Academy – the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” live in parallel worlds. And there we see a non-subdued consequence of the atheist time. But we believe in the perspectives of cooperation of the theological and secular schools for the sake of the future generations of our God-loving orthodox people.
† Volodymyr,
Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine,
Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
