During four days, from January 27 to January 31, at the Ukrainian Catholic University, a Winter School for undergraduate students “Lviv - a City of Dialogue” was held. Students from Central, Eastern, and Western Ukraine, including Rivne, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Kharkiv, Cherkasy, Lutsk, Kryvyi Rih, Chernivtsi and other cities of Ukraine took part in the ecumenical weekend.
During the School, students had the opportunity to listen to lectures, visit the Islamic Cultural Center, the Ivan Bosco Center, make soap during a master class, pray together at Divine Liturgy, attend a Lviv excursion, and most importantly, communicate.
The School started on Saturday, January 27, with the inauguration and presentation of the Master's Program "Ecumenical Studies: Christianity in Dialogue with World Religions, Society and Media", and later – with acquaintance with the participants, as well as presentations of the activities and projects of the Institute at the Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytskyi Center.
After dinner, journalist, religious analyst, editor-in-chief of “Patriarchate” magazine Anatolii Babinskyi gave an evening lecture on religion, society and European integration.
Sunday began with breakfast and Divine Liturgy. Afterward, the students visited the Mohammed Assad Islamic Cultural Center, accompanied by Roman Nazarenko, a doctoral student at the University of Tilburg, the referent of the UCU’s rector. In the afternoon, the participants visited the professional center of St. Ivan Bosco, where the introductory excursion for them was held by the IES project and program manager, Taras Kurylets. Sunday ended with a tour around the center of Lviv, held by the editor-in-chief of the Religious Tourism portal, Taras Antoshevskyi.
The third day of the Winter School began with an interesting and meaningful lecture on the history of the ecumenical movement: from the confrontation between Christians to the search for unity. “I like interesting information. Mr. Taras Kurylets told the story of Patriarch Kyryl's meeting with the Pope in 2016 and showed the focus of their dialogue – it was especially interesting for me,” shared his impressions Volodymyr Yarych from Kamianets-Podilskyi.
The first half of the day was dedicated to the visit to the Library, located in the Center of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi Center.
The final stage of the weekend – dinner, communicating and handing over certificates. Each participant received a nice gift.
“Attending the School made a positive impression on me. I gained a lot of new knowledge, got acquainted with the staff of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies. I am pleased that I got here,”- said Iryna Levchuk.
Prepared by Nataliia Likhnovska
Photo by the author