The head of the UOC, Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil and Brovary, noted that the annual participation of hundreds of thousands of believers in the celebrations of the Day of the Baptism of Rus, as well as the growth from year to year in the number of participants in the Great Religious Procession for peace and harmony in Ukraine testifies to the loyalty of the Ukrainian people to the canonical Church. This was reported by the Information and Education Department of the UOC.

“Every year in the dioceses of our Church there are many local processions of the cross associated with pilgrimages to shrines and church holidays. The largest religious procession for the Day of the Baptism of Rus was the All-Ukrainian religious procession in 2016, which took place from July 3 to July 27 and united the whole of Ukraine. It was the course of peace, love and prayer for Ukraine, which started from the Svyatogorsk Lavra in the east of Ukraine and the Holy Dormition Pochaev Lavra in the west, ”Vladyka noted. – The procession passed about 1200 kilometers to 12 dioceses of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. About 500 thousand believers took part in it. On July 27, processions of the cross met in Kiev on Vladimirskaya Gorka, from where, after the traditional annual prayer service, they went to the Holy Dormition Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. Despite all the difficulties, obstacles and provocations, the All-Ukrainian Religious Procession of Peace, Love and Prayer for Ukraine has become a unique example of the unity of all regions of Ukraine. Believers of Transcarpathia, Galicia, Bukovina, Volhynia, Polesie, Taurida, Slobozhanshchina and the central part of Ukraine prayed for peace in the state, as well as believers in Crimea, Donbass and Luhansk oblast ”.

As Metropolitan Anthony noted, the number of participants in the Great Religious Procession from Vladimirskaya Gorka to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra on the Day of the Baptism of Rus is growing every year.