Santa Sofia a Via Boccea
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Santa Sofia a Via Boccea is a church at 478 Via Boccea, in Rome, Italy. It is dedicated to Holy Wisdom ("Sancta Sophia" in Latin), one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It served as the Mother Church, of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, while St. George's Cathedral in Lviv was controlled by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The church is a meeting place and religious center for Ukrainians. Mass is celebrated according to the Byzantine-Ukrainian rite, while the church is in full communion with the Holy Father.
The church was built in 1967-1968 on the orders of Cardinal Josyf Slipyj, Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Catholic Church who had spent almost 20 years in soviet GULAG in Siberia, and was released in 1963 but not allowed to return to Ukraine. It is modeled after an eponymous church in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Relics of Pope Clement I (88-97) are kept in the church. As it is of the Byzantine rite, it has an iconostasis, painted by Juvenalij Josyf Mokryckyj.
In 1985, Pope John Paul II erected the church as one of the tituli suitable for Cardinal Priests. The first Cardinal Priest with title to Santa Sofia a Via Boccea was Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky. The current titular of the church is H.E. cardinal Lubomyr Husar, M.S.U., Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halych for the Ukrainians. He was appointed on February 21, 2001.
In 1998 the church was raised to the status of minor basilica.
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