His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr met with newly-appointed heads of State Department for Execution of Sentences

Ukrainian Orthodox Church

On May 26, at the residence of the UOC Primate His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr met with the newly appointed administration of the State Department for execution of Penalties led by its chairman Alexander Lisitskov.

Attending the meeting also was Secretary for the UOC Primate, His Grace Alexander, Bishop of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy, and chair of the Synodal Department of the UOC for Pastoral Care of the Penitentiary System archpriest Victor Yatsenko.

Greeting the guests, the Archpastor wished God’s assistance in their difficult work.

“Your work is difficult – everyone understands it, this is an obedience that your bear. Your activity has peculiar overtones that any other specialty probably does not possess. I wish that God blessed your good initiatives and good doings and that the power of God was always with you, that your reason and heart were always involved in your work”, he said in particular.

In the course of conversation the sides discussed the issues of interrelations of the Church and the Department in the domain of providing pastoral care to the convicts. Besides, the Department’s chairman got blessing of the Primate for construction of the church of God in the territory of the institution.

As a keepsake of meeting, on behalf of those attending the Department chairman offered to His Beatitude Metropolitan a model of wooden ship symbolizing salutary Church as a present. In his turn His Beatitude Volodymyr offered the guests the disks with akathist to the Holy Hierarch Nicholas the Wonderworker and editions of the New Testament as presents.

Source: