Epiphanius I of Ukraine and Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk meet on March 23, 2022. / news.ugcc.ua.
Kyiv, Ukraine, Mar 24, 2022 / 07:05 am (CNA).
The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church met on Wednesday with the leader of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk and Epiphanius I of Ukraine discussed the importance of cooperation during the war at their meeting in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on March 23.
Afterward, the two Church leaders met with Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, a former heavyweight boxing champion.
Shevchuk has led the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), the largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with Rome, since 2011.
Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv and All Ukraine was installed as primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) in 2019. The OCU is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church formed from a merger of Orthodox communities in Ukraine.
Після завершення зустрічі Глави УГКЦ та ПЦУ поспілкувалися з міським головою міста Києва Віталій Кличко, побажавши йому…
The OCU was formally recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, in 2019. The step was opposed by the Russian Orthodox Church, which broke off relations with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in protest.
The OCU is one of two major Orthodox bodies in Ukraine, alongside the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP).
“The participants of the meeting, once again categorically condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine, discussed the current dramatic circumstances of life and ministry of both Churches in Ukraine,” it said.
“His Beatitude Sviatoslav noted that the UGCC and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church can and must cooperate, and the fate and future of Ukraine depend on the level of this cooperation.”
The Department of Information added that Metropolitan Epiphanius underlined the importance of bilateral cooperation between Orthodox Christians and Greek Catholics in helping the Ukrainian people during the war.
He also stressed the need for cooperation within the broader framework of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (UCCRO), and in contacts with religious leaders and institutions abroad.
Also on March 23, Shevchuk visited a hospital in Kyiv. In his daily video message on March 24, a month after the full-scale Russian invasion began, he said he was struck that he did not see a sad face among the wounded defenders of Ukraine.
“When I greeted them, I held their courageous hand in my hands, but the rest of their body, the whole body was wounded,” he said.
“This soldier, this person, this woman, smiling, told me about victory, the victory of Ukraine. And everyone asked for prayer so that they could return to the army as soon as possible, and again side by side with their fellow sisters and brothers to defend our homeland.”
“Their faces, their eyes, their supplications shine with hope for all of us. With the hope that the truth will be victorious.”
In his video message, Shevchuk called for urgent action to save the population of Mariupol, a city in southeastern Ukraine that has suffered severe Russian bombardment. The settlement, which had a pre-war population of more than 400,000, is known as the “City of Mary.”
“Today, this city needs humanitarian corridors. It needs even the international community to help break through the siege and bring humanitarian goods, which we have, to those who are slowly dying of hunger today,” he said.
“Last week, these people survived on snow that was melting and could thereby have drinking water. Today there is no more snow in Mariupol. Let us save this City of Mary! Let us do everything to save this city, which really is today a place of clash of good and evil, a place where the fate of Ukraine, Europe, and the world is decided.”
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CNA Staff, Dec 26, 2023 / 04:00 am (CNA).
If “Good King Wenceslas” is one of the Christmas hymns you look forward to each year, you probably know which saint is celebrated today — St. Stephen, th… […]
An artist’s rendering of the affordable apartment complex soon to be built by Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance in Los Angeles. / Courtesy of Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance
St. Louis, Mo., Aug 26, 2024 / 06:30 am (CNA).
Los Angeles is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, with an average home price almost touching a million dollars in 2024 — a landscape that crowds out not only the poor, but also young families with children. The high cost of housing is one of the primary reasons why tens of thousands of people live on the streets of LA, and most of those who are housed are “rent burdened,” which means they spend more than 30% of their income just keeping a roof over their heads.
In the face of such challenges, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently announced it will provide land for a new housing development dedicated to serving community college students and young people exiting the foster care system.
Amy Anderson, executive director of Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance and a former chief of housing for the City of Los Angeles, told EWTN News that a group of Catholic lay leaders from the business and philanthropic community reached out to the archdiocese with a vision for creating an independent, nonprofit affordable housing development organization.
“Our vision is to really collaborate with the archdiocese and [use] the resources potentially available from the archdiocese to create homes that are affordable to a wide range of populations and incomes,” Anderson told “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Tracy Sabol.
She said they hope to break ground on the project, known as the Willowbrook development, “about a year from now.”
“The archdiocese is a fantastic partner. They are providing the land for our first development, which is already in process, and we’re working really closely with them to identify additional opportunities.”
The proposed building, which will be located steps from Los Angeles Community College, will feature 74 affordable housing units, as well as “on-site supportive services” for young people transitioning out of foster care — a population that often ends up experiencing homelessness.
The land, located at 4665 Willow Brook Ave just a few miles from the Hollywood Sign, currently hosts a Catholic Charities building, which will move its operations to another site to make way for the apartments.
“Through Catholic Charities and our ministries on Skid Row [an LA street where many unhoused people live] and elsewhere, we have been working for many years to provide shelter and services for our homeless brothers and sisters,” Archbishop Jose Gomez said in a statement to LAist.
“With this new initiative we see exciting possibilities to make more affordable housing available, especially for families and young people.”
Making land work for mission
The Catholic Church is often cited as the largest non-governmental owner of land in the entire world, with an estimated 177 million acres owned by Catholic entities.
Maddy Johnson, program manager for the Church Properties Initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate (FIRE), noted that the Church as a large landowner is not a new phenomenon, but there is a need today to adapt to modern challenges like regulations, zoning, and the importance of caring for the natural environment.
Many Catholic dioceses and religious orders have properties in their possession that aren’t fulfilling their original purpose, including disused natural land and parking lots, as well as shuttered convents and schools. Sometimes, Johnson said, a diocese or religious order doesn’t even realize the full extent of what they own.
“How can the Church make good strategic decisions, strategic and mission-aligned decisions, if it doesn’t know what properties it’s responsible for?” she said.
The Church of St. Agatha and St. James in Philadelphia, with The Chestnut in the foreground, a housing unit developed on property ground-leased from the church. Courtesy of Maddy Johnson/Church Properties Initiative
Since real estate management is not the Church’s core competency, FIRE aims to “provide a space for peer learning” to educate and equip Church leaders to make better use of their properties in service of the Church’s mission.
To this end, they offer an undergraduate minor at Notre Dame that aims to teach students how to help the Church make strategic real estate decisions that align with the Church’s mission. The Institute also organizes a quarterly networking call with diocesan real estate directors, as well as an annual conference to allow Catholic leaders to convene, share best practices, and learn from each other.
Fr. Patrick Reidy, C.S.C., a professor at Notre Dame Law School and faculty co-director of the Church Properties Initiative, conducts a workshop for diocesan leaders on Notre Dame’s campus in summer 2023. Courtesy of David J. Murphy/Church Properties Initiative
In many cases, Catholic entities that have worked with FIRE have been able to repurpose properties in a way that not only provides income for the church, but also fills a need in the community.
Johnson said the Church is called to respond to the modern problems society faces — one of which is a lack of housing options, especially for the poor.
“Throughout its history, there have been so many different iterations of how the Church expresses its mission…through education, healthcare — those are the ones that we’ve gotten really used to,” Johnson said.
“In our day and age, could it be the need for affordable housing?…that’s a charitable human need in the area that’s not being met.”
Unlocking potential in California
Queen of Angels Housing’s first development, which has been in the works for several years, is being made possible now by a newly-passed state law in California that aims to make it easier for churches to repurpose their land into housing.
California’s SB 4, the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act, was signed into law in October 2023. It streamlines some of the trickiest parts of the process of turning church-owned land into housing — the parts most people don’t really think about. These can include permitting and zoning restrictions, which restrict the types of buildings that can be built in a given area and can be difficult and time-consuming to overcome. SB 4 even includes a provision allowing for denser housing on church-owned property than the zoning ordinances would normally allow.
Yes in God’s Backyard
The law coming to fruition in California is part of a larger movement informally dubbed “Yes in God’s Backyard,” or YIGBY — a riff on the term “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY), a phenomenon whereby neighbors take issue with and oppose new developments.
Several Catholic real estate professionals with ties to California expressed excitement about the possibilities that SB 4 has created in the Golden State.
Steve Cameron, a Catholic real estate developer in Orange County, told CNA that he is currently working with the Diocese of Orange, which abuts the LA archdiocese, to inventory properties that could be repurposed for residential use.
He said their focus is on building apartment buildings and townhomes, primarily for rental rather than for sale, in an attempt to address the severe housing shortage and high costs in Southern California.
Unlike some dioceses, the Orange diocese has an electronic GIS (geographic information system) database showing all the properties it owns. Prepared by a civil engineering firm, the database includes details such as parcel numbers, acreage, title information, and demographic reports, which facilitate the planning and development process.
“Strategically, what we’re doing is we’re inventorying all of the property that the diocese and the parishes own, and trying to understand where there might be underutilized property that would make sense to develop some residential use,” Cameron said.
Cameron said he can’t yet share details about the housing projects they’re working on, but said they are looking to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Queen of Angels housing project as a model for how to take advantage of the new incentives created by SB 4.
“I think it’s great, and it’s exciting that they’re taking the lead and that they are able to find an opportunistic way to repurpose an underutilized property to meet the housing shortage in California,” he said.
“[We] look at them as a role model for what we’re trying to accomplish here in the Diocese of Orange.”
Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago with One Chicago Square in the background, a residential tower constructed on the former cathedral parking lot, which was sold in 2019. Courtesy of Maddy Johnson/Church Properties Initiative
John Meyer, a former president of the California-based Napa Institute who now works in real estate with J2 Development, emphasized the importance of viewing the Church’s vast real estate holdings as an asset rather than a liability.
Meyer said he is currently working with two Catholic entities on the East Coast on ground lease projects, one of which will fund the construction of a new Catholic Student Center at a university. He told CNA he often advises Catholic entities to lease the land they own rather than selling it, allowing the church to maintain ownership of the property while generating income.
Naturally, he noted, any real estate project the Church undertakes ought to align with the Church’s mission of spreading the Gospel, and not merely be a means of making money.
“Any time we look at the Church’s real estate decisions, it’s got to be intertwined with mission and values,” he said.
“We’re not just developing for the sake of developing. What we want to do is we want to create value for the Church, and we also want to create value for the community. So working closely with the municipality to make sure that needs are met, and to be a good neighbor, is important.”
He said Church leaders should strongly consider taking advantage of incentives in various states such as California for projects like affordable housing, which align with the Church’s mission and provide both social and financial benefits.
“Priests and bishops aren’t ordained to do these things, and sometimes they have people in their diocese that have these abilities, and sometimes they don’t,” Meyer said.
“This [new law] in California has created an incentive that we can take advantage of, so we need to take advantage of that incentive…it’s allowing us to unlock potential value in land while at the same time serving a social good that’s part of the mission of the Church.”
[In his video message, Shevchuk called for urgent action to save the population of Mariupol, a city in southeastern Ukraine that has suffered severe Russian bombardment.]
[In his video message, Shevchuk called for urgent action to save the population of Mariupol, a city in southeastern Ukraine that has suffered severe Russian bombardment.]
Tell it to Azov.