At the ceremony, Father Swiders’kyj stressed: “The force of compassion and conversion that emanates from the image of the Shroud is the reality that allows us today to understand the pain of the Ukrainian nation.”
“Once again our homeland – after the genocide of millions of Ukrainian peasants planned by Stalinism and after the thousands of priests, bishops and Catholic faithful murdered out of hatred for the faith during the Soviet period – is called to a new test: to live “the terrible suffering of a bloody war, suffering that, however, we know will precede the ‘resurrection,'” he added.
“We can say that we identify with the Shroud of Jesus as a Church, as Roman Catholic Christians and even as a nation. This The image of Christ (image of Christ) must become the symbol, the banner of all experiences of persecution and hope, because in the Holy Shroud we read the face of suffering but also the miracle of the Resurrection.”