Jubilee of Eastern Churches concludes with gratitude for Pope Leo's encouragement (L'Osservatore Romano (Italian))

The Jubilee of the Eastern Churches, part of the 2025 jubilee year, concluded on May 14 with a Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite in St. Peter’s Basilica. Patriarch Youssef Absi, the head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, was the principal celebrant.

Referring to Pope Leo XIV’s address to Eastern Catholics, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said:

We felt embraced by the Holy Father, consoled in our present sufferings and anguish, appreciated in our ancient Christian traditions and encouraged in our evangelizing mission that we carry out in the contemporary world.

Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, said that “the Church is one because it is varied” and “not one because it is uniform. And it is in this variety and in respect of the rights of this variety that we want to do what the Holy Father has entrusted to us as a Dicastery, to support, defend, protect the Eastern Churches both in their territories and where they have been brought by the violence of wars, oppression and persecution.”