The Holy Trinity Church in Yalta became the pilgrimage place

Among those who participated in the pilgrimage there were more than 300 faithful people and 27 priests and members of religious orders of Lviv metropolis, Odessa -Crimea and Donetsk exarchates, Bielorussia and Poland; the singing of the seminarians from three seminaries of the Greek Catholic Church adorned the feast.

Moreover, during the combined choir of the seminarians in the Alushta Park, "Crimea in miniature", Bishop Vasyl blessed miniature version of the Holy Trinity Church- the first Temple of the UGCC in the Crimea region.

It should be noted that within the frames of the pilgrimage, there was held the meeting between the pupils of Kyiv, Drohobych and Uzhgorod seminaries, during which the future pastors shared their experience of youth ministry, their vision of the specificity and tasks, as well as the directions of the youth pastoral ministry. Bishop Vasyl, the Exarch of Odessa and Crimea, who started this meeting with the prayer and the Episcopal blessing, expressed hope that such meetings, between the seminarian youth on the territory of the Exarchate, will become a tradition and will contribute to greater convergence of our people in the whole variety of cultural and ethnic existence of the united population.

Let us remind that martyr Clement was the fourth Pope of Rome. He baptized a number of people in the then Rome, and was healing the sick. That was for the preaching of Christ's teaching that the then authority of the Roman Empire condemned him to the exile in a quarry near the Chersonese. In the Chersonese, an irresistible torrent of people was approaching the martyr, so as to become baptized. Meanwhile, in the Crimea there were 75 Christian churches built. However, the Roman authorities did not stop with expulsion of Pope Clement. The decision was taken to kill him. He was taken out to sea and drowned there. However, each year on the day of his death, the sea pulled apart, and people arrived in order to worship him, and then, with the God's help, managed to find his relics, which since the 22^nd of July, owing to the Primate of the UGCC, His Beatitude Sviatoslav, have been located here, in Yalta, in the Holy Trinity Church.

The Holy Trinity Church was constructed by the faithful of the Greek Catholic Church, Petro Tokach. We asked him several questions.

- Mr. Petro, what, in particular, prompted you to build a Greek Catholic church in Yalta?

- We will probably not realize entirely what directs us in our deeds. I was first coming here on vacation but there was no church to which to go in here. And that was the time when the idea came: why not to build the temple by myselfitself? With the emergence of this idea, to the fore came the figure of Pope Clement I.

- How long did the construction of the Church take?

- The construction of the church took ten months and it was consecrated in 2011, on the feast of the Holy Trinity. This was the year when His Beatitude Sviatoslav brought the relics of St. Clement from Rome, which were exhibited there for public veneration. This was the idea of Patriarch Sviatoslav to establish the pilgrimage center. Our objective is to make pilgrimage to here on a monthly basis from each Exarchate.

- Which goal would you like to achieve, after the construction of the church?

- If at least one person converts in here - this will become my goal. I would like the Liturgy to be served here each day. Because when the bells are ringing, the local people, although not particularly faithful, will certainly come for the Worshipping.

Photo report

UGCC Department of Information