For Ukrainian Orthodox in US, war news casts pall on Easter

“This is a very strange Easter for us,” said the Rev.

Orysia Germak, a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral of St.

Most Catholics and Protestants celebrated Easter last Sunday, but Eastern Orthodox are celebrating this Sunday.

His elderly parents are in the city of Lviv, which has been thronged with refugees from elsewhere in Ukraine; his older brother is fighting with the Ukrainian army on the eastern front.

A schism among Ukrainian Orthodox — with one group asserting independence and the other historically loyal to the patriarch of Moscow — has reverberated worldwide amid competing claims of legitimacy.

In the United States, many people with ties to Ukraine are monitoring the war closely and sending funds to individuals and aid groups there, said Andrew Fessak, president of the board of trustees at St.

While Orthodox in America can celebrate freely, “our relatives and friends in Ukraine are under pressure from an invading army and aren’t as free to celebrate as they wish,” Fessak said.

Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, said it’s important to carry out the historic rituals even in somber times — in part to defy Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched the war while claiming that Ukraine has no historic legitimacy apart from Russia.

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