of the ethnically Ukrainian (and Belarusian) territories to the reborn Polish state. This included Polesie and Volhynia, areas with almost exclusively Orthodox population amongst the rural peasants, as well as the former Austrian province of Galicia with its Uniate population. The Greek Catholic church, which functions in communion with the Latin Rite Catholicism, could have hoped to receive a better treatment in Poland, whose leadership, especially the endecja party, saw the Catholicism as one of the main tools to unify the nation where non-Polish minority comprised over one third of the citizenry. Nevertheless, the Poles saw the Greek Catholic Galicia Ukrainians as even less reliable and loyal as the Orthodox Volhynia Ukrainians. Also, despite the communion with Rome, the UGCC attained a strong Ukrainian national character of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and the Polish authorities sought to weaken it in various ways. In 1924, following a visit with the Ukrainian Catholic believers in North America and western Europe, the head of the UGCC was initially denied reentry to Lviv until after a considerable delay. Polish priests led by their bishops began to undertake missionary work among Eastern Rite faithful, and the administrative restrictions were placed on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. With respect to the Orthodox Ukrainian population in eastern Poland, the Polish government initially issued a decree defending the rights of the Orthodox minorities. In practice, this often failed, as the Catholics, also eager to strengthen their position, had stronger representation in the Sejm and the courts. Any accusation was strong enough for a particular church to be confiscated and handed over to the Catholic Church. During the Polish rule, 190 Orthodox churches were destroyed (although some of them have already been abandoned) and 150 were forcibly transformed into Catholic (not Ukrainian Catholic) churches. Such actions were condemned by the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, who claimed that these acts would "destroy in the souls of our non-united Orthodox brothers the very thought of any possibility of reunion." In addition to persecution from the new authorities, the Orthodox clergy found itself with no ecclesiastical link to submit to. Like most ex-Russian Orthodox communities that ended up outside the USSR, and thus with no possible contact with the persecuted mother church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople agreed to take over Moscow Patriarchate's role and in 1923 the Polish Orthodox Church was formed out of the