Pilgrimages to the sylvan church: Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Poland searching for home

This article examines a case study of a restored rural Ukrainian Greek Catholic (UGC) church and its re-animated pilgrimage in southeast Poland. The argument assesses the relevance of Hervieu-Leger’s ‘chain of memory’ concept of religion to interpret this renewed community-building and ritual. I begin from the post-WWII context of communist destruction of the church, the years of state-imposed silence and the return the UGC community faced, and I frame the community’s post-communist reclamation of sites in terms of Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine, where the local UGCs embrace a new ethical role in welcoming refugees. The revived pilgrimage to a restored shrine reanimates links in the communal chain of memory, bridging a traumatic past and hope for a future home for the uprooted. I thus use ‘chain of memory’ to comment on grassroots phenomena that acknowledge world events and to read history anew, as a cyclical experience of returning home.