Wales and Ukraine have enjoyed connections between them for well over 100 years. The engineer, John Hughes, founded the city of Donetsk in around 1872, while the journalist Gareth Jones exposed the forced famine that killed up to 10 million Ukrainians between 1932 and 33. It was the post-war period, though, that saw many Ukrainians settle here as labourers, staying and establishing themselves in communities across South Wales.

The children and grandchildren of these original settlers live here now, together with a new generation of Ukrainians, and it is these that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (that is, a Ukrainian Orthodox Church that entered into communion with Rome in the late 16th century) seeks to serve. But not these only,

Most Ukrainians are Eastern Orthodox Christians. Established in 2013, the Parish of St Theodore of Tarsus works to bring Ukrainians together for worship in their own language and traditions, but also to reach out to the community by inviting all people to experience Christianity as it has been lived in the Eastern Mediterranean and Slavic worlds since the first century A.D.

We are now in a position to buy a building for ourselves, but need help. If you have any interest at all in the connections between Wales and Ukraine, in supporting a long-standing and hard-working group of people who have chosen Wales as their home, or simply in the living of the Gospel today as it has been lived for almost 2000 years, then we would love to hear you.

Buying a new building is a huge undertaking for a small community, but we believe there is much fruit to be borne from our work, and especially when we are carrying this out from a permanent home.