As Brother Alois said during his meditation given during the visit:
"For twenty years many young people from your country have made a pilgrimage to Taizé, and I’m happy to be able to come here myself as on a pilgrimage, so that together we can strengthen our faith in Christ, our trust in God."
Anna confirms this expectation: "During the meeting in Kiev, I liked the sung prayer together. Through it, one can find inner peace, become aware of the love of God. Staying close to God puts into perspective the problems and difficulties, and we see them more as passing events that will not last forever."
Preparing the meeting was not without its own difficulties but that proved temporary. Young people from various denominations were able to work together to work through different challenges: coordinating the program, practising songs, organising accommodation for young people from other cities, preparing the meals, visiting different places where the workshops would take place, keeping in touch by email with participants, decorating places of worship and of course welcoming the people when they finally came.
Lyudmila, from Lviv, wrote after the meeting: "I am very grateful for the brothers’ visit to Ukraine and for the opportunity to meet, talk, and pray together. I enjoyed the ideas put forward in the workshops - I took part in one on the theme of serving God through the media."
For many young people, this meeting was a true experience of Church. Marina writes: "I was touched during these two days to discover that the unity of the Church is something mysterious and hidden, it is for us to discover, not to create. I am delighted to have been able to come close to this mystery, through common prayer and the simple act of meeting. ’
On Sunday 23th September, the day after the youth meeting, Brother Alois gave a talk at the Lavra Monastery in Kiev, during an international theological conference on the theme of testimony. He was also able to visit Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev who, in a very moving way, evoked his memories of a visit to Taizé twenty years ago.
During the stay in Kiev, the brothers met several other Orthodox bishops, as well as the Latin and Greek Catholic bishops and the Lutheran pastor.
One of the brothers then stayed on to visit several other cities: Dniepropetrovsk, Odessa, Komsomolsk. Everywhere the welcome was warm and again the highlight was the diversity of denominational backgrounds - a visit to an Orthodox seminary, evening prayer in a Lutheran church working with the local Catholic parish, meetings with young people getting ready to come to the meeting in Rome. The program was intense, even including ... a boat trip on the river Dnieper.
Finally, in the West of the country, he was able to take part in the ecumenical social action conference taking place in Lviv, with a prayer led by young people from the city, who meet to pray together each week of the year.
Despite real divisions between Christians, and suffering inherited from the past, it was still possible throughout these visits and meetings in Ukraine to rediscover that in Christ we are all sisters and brothers ... and we belong to each other.
