In the joint pastoral letter, the bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the United States paid tribute to the nation’s founding ideals and to the Ukrainian Catholic contribution to American life.
The bishops also applied the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence to Ukraine today:
Ukrainians are not fighting for territory alone. They are fighting for the same truths that the Founders called self-evident: that human beings are created equal, that their rights come from God and not from governments, and that no empire has the authority to extinguish them.
Freedom is not free. Americans have known this and have paid for it in blood throughout their history. Today Ukrainians are paying the same price in their own blood. Their struggle, however, is not for Ukraine alone. It is a witness to the world that the principles of the American founding are not the property of one nation or one moment in history. They are universal, and they are always worth defending.