CBC Radio has featured His Beatitude’s Tuesday lecture on Ideas which is a national program that airs across Canada. Click here to listen!
From the CBC Ideas March 2025 Schedule Page:
WAR, PEACE AND TRUTH: UKRANIAN ARCHBISHOP SVIATOSLAV SHEVCHUK How can religion help decode the motives for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine? And how can Judeo-Christian ethics inform a way forward for peace? Ukrainian Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, and bestselling historian of Central European politics Timothy Snyder explore these questions during a public event in Toronto.
+Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the more than 5 million Ukrainian Catholics worldwide, will deliver a public lecture at the Isabel Bader Theatre at Victoria College (93 Charles Street West) at the University of Toronto on February 25 at 7 p.m.
Professor andNew York Times best-selling author Timothy Snyder will respond to the lecture. , Snyder teaches at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and is a leading public intellectual in modern Central European politics.
As the war enters its fourth year, their conversation will focus on how religion is key in decoding the motives for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. They will also discuss the ethical dimensions of the Judeo-Christian tradition as a way forward for peace.
This past December, Shevchuk celebrated Christmas in a bomb shelter in Kyiv. For the greater part of the 20th century, the Ukrainian Catholic Church was the largest body of illegal Christians in the world under the Soviet Union. His experience growing up in this reality informs his moral authority as a voice for human dignity and peace, both in Ukraine and on the world stage. As a religious leader, he continues to draw wisdom from those who have suffered from the fallout of the war.
The Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies is proud to announce the recipients of this year’s Non-Resident Ukrainian Fellows.
The Fellowship is open to Ukrainian faculty or Ukrainian advanced PhD students working on research topics in Eastern Christian history, liturgy, spirituality or theology who have been affected by the war on Ukraine. During the term of their Fellowship, each of our talented colleagues will work on their respective projects and will present their research in a lecture at the end of their fellowship. More details about dates of lectures will be announced in the near future. The Non-Resident Fellows program has also benefitted from the generous collaboration of the Jacyk Centre for the Study of Ukraine (at the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies (CEES) at the Munk School, University of Toronto).
Dr. Andrii Smyrnov is a professor at the Department of history at the National University of Ostroh Academy (Ukraine). His research interests are focused primarily on church history, church-state relations and ecumenism. Dr. Smyrnov earned his Doctor of Historical Sciences degree in 2021 at the National University of Ostroh Academy. He is the author of Between the Cross, the Swastika and the Red Star: Ukrainian Orthodoxy during the Second World War (2021) as well as a number of publications on the history of religion.
Dr. Smyrnov serves as a member of the Expert Council under the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, Synodal Commission for the inter-Christian relations of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Pathways to Peace Initiative steering group of the Conference of European Churches, and the World Council of Churches reference group for the pilgrimage of justice, reconciliation and unity.
During his fellowship, Dr. Andrii Smyrnov will work on his research project titled “The Orthodox Church of Ukraine: Ecumenical Perspectives.”
Dr. Iuliia Korniichuk holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from National Pedagogical Dragomanov University in Kyiv. She has taught courses in Ukrainian Culture, Religious Studies, and Religion and Politics at both National Pedagogical Dragomanov University and the University of Warsaw.
Dr. Korniichuk has been a fellow in various programmes, including Lane Kirkland Programme, Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Indiana University Bloomington, and University of Munich. Her key publications appear in Politics and Religion Journal, Religions, Stosunki Międzynarodowe – International Relations, and the forthcoming Eastern Journal of European Studies.
Her research interests encompass religion and politics, Eastern Orthodoxy, higher education, decolonisation, and Euro-integration. For the MASI Non-Resident Fellowship she will begin work on a project entitled “Challenges for International Representation of Ukrainian Orthodox Churches: Soviet Legacies in Contemporary Perspective.”
Dr. Taras Tymo is a patristic scholar who holds a bachelor’s degree from the Ukrainian Catholic University (L’viv, Ukraine, 1999); a licentiate (STL) in Theology and Patristics (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, 2001); and MA in Early Christian studies from the University of Notre Dame (USA), 2006. He recently received his Doctorate in Theology (STD) from Ukrainian Catholic University. In 2013,
He taught for the Sheptytsky Institute’s summer program in Univ, Ukraine, on the theology and spirituality of Icons.
His project for the MASI Non-Resident Fellowship extends the work he did in his doctoral dissertation. His project is entitled “Mystery of Theology”: St. Symeon the New Theologian on the Trinity and the Nature of Theology.” Part of this research period will also will include translating, for the first time into Ukrainian, selected works of St. Symeon.
The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptysky Institute is hosting two public seminar-series led by Rev. Dr. Jack Custer focused on the Biblical Books of Genesis and Exodus. The dates for the first series are January 14, 21, 28, & February 4; for the second, the dates are March 4, 11, 18, & 25. Seminars will take place on Tuesday afternoons and will begin with a complementary lunch at Sheptytsky House (5 Elmsley Place) whereafter the seminar will begin at 13:30. Seminars will last anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes, depending on the sessions. These seminars will be focused on a close reading of selected texts as informed by both contemporary exegetical methods and the Patristic and Rabbinic Traditions with particular reference to the Byzantine liturgical tradition. No knowledge of original languages is required or prior reading is required.
The Sheptytsky Institute will host a Divine Liturgy offered prior to each session from 12:00-13:00 in St. Sophia Chapel, located in Elmsley Hall.
These amazing learning opportunities are free, although registration is required:
On October 26, 2018, Dr. Kyriaki Karidoyanes visited the Sheptytsky Institute and graciously agreed to an interview. In a wide ranging discussion, she spoke about her recent publications, what Orthodoxy can contribute to contemporary human psychology, women deaconesses in the church and on Orthodox women in the church, the 2016 Pan-Orthodox synod in Crete, and the current relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Awarded the Ph.D. degree from the Division of Theological and Religious Studies at Boston University, Dr. FitzGerald has specialized in Orthodox systematic theology both at the School of Theology of the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, where she obtained a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies, and at Holy Cross Orthodox School of Theology, where she earned the Master of Divinity degree. In 1994 she was honored as the first woman graduate to receive the Alumni Citation “in recognition of her support of and bringing recognition to Hellenic College-Holy Cross School of Theology.”
Presv. Kyriaki has served as a consultant to the World Council of Churches, where she taught as a visiting professor at the Ecumenical Institute (Geneva, Switzerland) during the 1994-97 academic years and the Institute’s Bossey Seminars 1998 (Athens, Greece).
For fourteen years Dr. FitzGerald served as a commissioner of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, representing the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. She is frequently invited to represent the Patriarchate at international ecumenical dialogues and meetings.
