The head of the Lviv diocese of the UGCC, Ihor Vozniak, said that from next year Greek Catholics will completely switch to the Gregorian liturgical calendar, thus moving away from the practice of using the New Julian calendar, which was introduced at the end of 2023 together with the OCU. This is reported by the website of the Lviv Archdiocese of the UGCC.

“This year Easter will be on May 5, late, so a lot of the Sunday and weekday readings of Holy Scripture are repeated. Next year we will celebrate Easter on April 20 together with the Roman Catholics, and perhaps from then on we will have common celebrations of all the major feasts. Thus there will again be a change of calendar. Already the celebration of Christmas and Epiphany took place behind the new dates in our Church and all immovable feasts will be changed, we should be attentive to the proposed calendar”, – said the head of the Lviv diocese of the UGCC during his sermon.

At the same time, Igor Vozniak believes that the transition to the Gregorian calendar will bring inconvenience to relations with the OCU, especially in those churches that the denominations share with each other. The representative of the UGCC suggests that the OCU is unlikely to go for another change of its calendar.

“Why did our Church leave Easter to be celebrated according to the Julian calendar and not according to the Gregorian calendar? First of all, the intention was to ascertain the sentiments of the faithful, also of the clergy, concerning the change introduced, because abroad, in some places in our Church, divisions were still continuing. Practice has shown that the vast majority of the faithful have welcomed the change of the church calendar. When we move to celebrate Easter according to the Gregorian calendar, we assume that the OCU will remain celebrating Easter according to the Julian calendar, then there will be a division under this occasion. It will be perceptible and somewhat strange in those cases where we have common services in one church with the PCU. For one calendar will be Easter, and others will continue to fast until the appropriate date of celebration”, – emphasized Igor Vozniak.

We shall remind you that earlier we reported that parishioners of churches of Mukachevo Greek-Catholic Eparchy (directly subordinate to the Vatican – ed.) created a petition demanding the leadership to celebrate Easter in 2024 not according to the Gregorian, but according to the New Julian calendar.