Annales Ecclesiae Ucrainae

UK launch of The Holy See and The Holodomor

2012-02-08T01:44:00.000-08:00

Rev. Dr.Athanasius McVay

& Prof. Lubomyr Luciuk

co-editors of

The Holy See and the Holodomor

will present this publication

at a book-launching ceremony at

The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain's Head Office,

49 Linden Gardens, London W2,

on 21 February 2011, 18.30 hrs.

Vatican Diplomacy vs. The Nuremburg Rallies

2012-01-10T02:32:00.000-08:00

Many unhistorical works have been written about the Holy See's attitude to the Nazi regime and it's inhuman and anti-Christian ideology. The following communique was sent to Ukrainian Catholic Bishop Vasyl Ladyka (and to all the Canadian Catholic Bishops) by the Apostolic Delegation of Canada on 28 September 1937:

I take the liberty to call Your attention upon the enclosed article, published by the “Osservatore Romano” No.215, entitled “After the Congress of Nuremberg", and dealing with the grevious conditions in which the Catholic Church actually stands in Germany. I respectfully beg from Your Excellency to invite the faithful to prayer in order that the merciful Lord might abbreviate the days of tribulation. In front of the campaign of mystification and falsehood which certain agencies pursue, even in Canada, about the real objective of the religious persecution in Germany, I beg for Your Excellency to enlighten, by all possible means, the faithful of Your diocese, by exposing the gravity of the situation and showing how the rights of the Church have been disregarded.

The Holy See and the Holodomor

2011-11-05T03:32:00.000-07:00

Interviews and Articles about the newly released book:

English audio interview for Vatican Radio

Ukrainian text interview for Radio Liberty - Український інтерв'ю для Радіо Свобода

German text interview for ZENIT

English text interview for Eastern Christian Books

English text interview for ZENIT

Ukrainian audio interview for Vatican Radio - Український інтерв'ю для Радіо Ватікан

Lubomyr Luciuk: English video interview for Kontakt

Lubomyr Luciuk: English tv interview for Michael Coren

The Holy See and the Holodomor

2011-09-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

You are cordially invited to attend a reception and book launch

The Holy See and the Holodomor

Documents from the Vatican Secret Archives on the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine.

by Reverend Dr. Athanasius McVay and Professor Lubomyr Luciuk

Centro Russia Ecumenica (Borgo Pio 141, Rome)

Wednesday, 26 October 2011, 5:30 pm

Sponsored by the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto and The Kashtan Press.

Order here: http://unftoronto.com/Forms/HolodBookOrderForm.pdf

The Greek-Catholic Bishops and Ukrainian Independence: 1918

2011-08-24T15:05:00.000-07:00

The Austrian Emperor Karl, when he still possessed legitimate power over the nationalities of Austria, promulgated an imperial manifesto to all the peoples of Austria on 17 October 1918, granting them the right to form their own separate national states. Our Ukrainian people of Eastern Galicia immediately called a national assembly on 19 October in Lviv. There, representatives of the whole nation and all its classes, in the presence of its three bishops (Metropolitan Sheptytsky, Bishop Khomyshyn, and myself), voted and proclaimed Eastern Galicia to be its own national, independent state under the name of “The Western Ukrainian Republic”.

After the promulgation of the imperial manifesto, all the nationalities of old Austria did the same. The Germans of Austria founded the Austrian-German Republic and their bishops immediately conformed to the new situation. This manner of proceeding of the German-Austrian bishops corresponded perfectly to the intentions of the Holy Father.

But Generals Haller and Iwaszkiewicz came and with the bayonet brought Eastern Galicia within the confines of Poland. When Metropolitan Sheptytsky, questioned on this, said that the proclamation of the Ukrainian National Assembly was a legitimate juridical act, he was accused of high treason.

— Blessed Josaphat Josyf Kotsylovsky, Bishop of Przemyśl (Peremyshl), to Nuncio Lorenzo Lauri, 10 December 1922.

Audiences of Pius XI with Cardinal Pacelli

2011-05-12T07:48:00.000-07:00

Last year, the Vatican Archives published the first volume of the minutes of the papal audiences (fogli d'udienza) granted by Pope Pius XI (Achille Ratti) to his second Secretary of State, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who was to succeed him in the papacy in 1939 as Pius XII. Pacelli served as an official in the papal Secretariat of State from 1904 to 1917, when he was named apostolic nuncio to Bavaria. After an agreement with the German state was reached in 1920, Pacelli was transferred to the newly-created nunciature of Berlin. In 1929 Pius XI summoned him to Rome to receive the cardinal's hat and the following year he was named to replace Cardinal Pietro Gasparri as Secretary of State, more or less the equivalent of a papal prime minister.

Each day the Pope received in audience one or more heads of his curial departments or their second-in-command, but the cardinal secretary of state was received daily and sometimes even on Sunday. Eugenio Pacelli imposed his own style and regimen on His Holiness' Secretariat of State. In the Vatican Archives and other archives of the Apostolic See, audience minutes were usually filed together with the matter to which they pertained. But Pacelli ordered that, after his subalterns had executed the Pope's decisions, the minutes were to be returned to his office where they were retained for reference. Even after Pacelli became Pope in March 1939, he retained the minutes of the audiences with his predecessor. After his death in 1958, they were returned to the archives of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs (AES- Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari), an affiliate of the Secretariat of State that dealt with matters in which civil governments were involved.

The minutes themselves are written in Cardinal Pacelli's clear and meticulous hand, on small sheets of paper. Each has the date of the audience at the top centre of the page and each issue has a topic heading, usually indented, followed by Pacelli's account of Pius XI's decision. Pacelli often took dictation, reporting the Pope's very own words on a given subject. Many of these quotations reveal the spontaneous reaction of the typically irascible Pius XI.

Pope John Paul II declassified the first series of documents from Pius XI's pontificate (1922-1939) and Pope Benedict XVI extended this permission to most of the archival collections of the Apostolic See. In 2010, the Vatican Secret Archives published the first volume of the Pius XI-Pacelli audience minutes in its Collectanea Archivi Vaticani series, for the audiences of 1930, Pacelli's first year as papal secretary. The volume contains three important introductory articles by the archives' prefect, Bishop Sergio Pagano, it's vice-prefect, Jesuit Father Marcel Chappin, and the expert scholar, Dr. Giovanni Coco. Coco's biographical article on Pacelli's first year as Secretary of State represents the most important and accurate work on that topic to date. Among other things, with highly intuitive historical analysis, Coco chronicles the transition of power between Gasparri and Pacelli. Following the three articles, the text of the minutes proper is enriched with a rigorous historical apparatus, for instance, copious footnotes which provide background information pertaining to the persons and issues mentioned. Cross references and exhaustive quotations are also provided from correspondence mentioned but not explained in the audience minutes. This publication also contains several useful appendices including short biographies of persons mentioned in the minutes. The Vatican Archives is preparing to publish a volume each year of the audience minutes from 1931-1939.

I was fortunate enough to acquire an autographed copy of the first volume of the fogli d'udienza earlier this year. However, this morning I had a opportunity to consult the original minutes, written in Pacelli's hand, for the years 1933-1934. They are found in the AES archives, which was relocated from the Vatican Secret Archives to the Secretariat of State in December 2010. I did not find the particular reference for which I was searching, but I did stumble upon other interesting issues.

Below is a sample of the minutes from three particular audiences. These excerpts yield a glimpse of the mind of Pius XI on certain political and ecclesiastical issues of the day. His reluctance to see Göbbels certainly reflects an unease towards the emerging regime in Germany.

Papa Ratti's views were coloured by his personal experience in Poland, where he had served as apostolic visitor and nuncio (1918-1921). His 'explosion' about the Pro Russia commission was provoked by Government and ecclesiastical opposition to his Byzantine-Catholic evangelization program. Notably, Marshall Piłsudski refused to permit the creation of two Byzantine-Rite bishoprics:

Audience of 14 March 1933. Possible nomination of an auxiliary Bishop for the Lemkos. Write the nuncio to examine the issue objectively and not to trust one or the other side, since statistics are often false.

Audience of 25 March 1933. Pastoral Letter of the Bishop of Podlachia. On page 23 [he says that] the Pro Russia Commission is useless here [in Poland]. [Pius XI to Pacelli]: And You also know where the opposition is coming from (it’s the Government which even Bishops and priests are colluding with. ... These Poles think only of Polonizing and Latinizing. They don’t want to understand anything. ... Even the Bishop of Podlachia is a Pole and a chauvinist.

Audience of 13 May 1933. Possible Audience for Minister Göbbels (See the report from the Nunciature of Berlin No. 7801). The Holy Father regrets that he is unable to receive him.

Making History - The Election of Sviatoslav Shevchuk

2011-03-25T04:49:00.000-07:00

On 23 March, the Synod of the Hierarchy of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church made history by electing 40-year-old Bishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk as Major-Archbishop (patriarch). The Apostolic See of Rome confirmed the election two days later, on the Feast of the Annunciation according to the Gregorian Calendar.

The choice of Kyr Shevchuk harkens back to that of Josyf Slipyj, Metropolitan Sheptytsky's chosen successor. Like Shevchuk, Slipyj was in his early forties when presented in 1937. He was also Shevchuk's predecessor as Rector of the Ukrainian Catholic seminary in Lviv. Both held doctorates in theology from Roman pontifical universities, Slipyj from the Gregorian and Shevchuk from the Angelicum. Despite their youth, both men were chosen over more experienced bishops due to their superior theological science and inspired vision. Both were secular priests who succeeded monastics: Metropolitan Sheptytsky was a Basilian and Cardinal Husar a Studite. Both Slipyj and Shevchuk were chosen over Redemptorist candidates. Pope Pius XI initially inclined to Sheptytsky's second choice, Bishop Charnetsky, and there were several prominent Redemptorist candidates at this past synod.

The similarity of Shevchuk's figure to that of his predecessor is evident in the following description by Sheptytsky, written in May 1937:

Among the priests of my diocese that I would name as distinguishing themselves by their virtue, their talents and their knowledge [...] the Rector of the Seminary and the Academy, Msgr. Joseph Slipyj. He is an initiator and an organizer, a man of wide views and of solid science, having always striven for knowledge and for the Seminary. He is little known by most of the people but the clergy esteems him much.

Hopefully Shevchuk will also make history by becoming the youngest member of the College of Cardinals. While this honour depends on Pope Benedict's personal decision, given Shevchuk's extreme youth it will probably not happen before 2013, when his immediate predecessor turns 80 and loses the right to vote in the Conclave. In addition to my conviction that our hierarchs made the best possible choice, I am personally overjoyed by this election because His Beatitude and I were born 30-days apart and were both theological students at the Angelicum from 1994 to 1995.

27 March 2011: Like his immediate predecessor, Cardinal Husar, Shevchuk is beginning to make history. Today he became the first Catholic primate of Kyiv-Halych:

— to be enthroned in the ancient capital of Kyiv since the Eighteenth century

— to be enthroned in the yet-incomplete Sobor (Arch-cathedral) of the Resurrection

— to have other Eastern Catholic Patriarchs and primates flanking him at the ceremony, notably Patriarch Gregorios III of Antioch and Slovak Metropolitan Ján Babjak.

— to have present at his enthronement representatives from all three Orthodox Churches of Ukraine.

See also "The Church is Young" on the webpage of the Pontifical Society of St. John Chrysostom.

Sheptytsky Requests a Successor

2011-03-14T02:05:00.000-07:00

Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky to Pope Pius XI, November 1937:

I think I am obliged in conscience to ask for a coadjutor with the right of succession, and here are the arguments that compel me to this request: 

The time of my death will probably be a moment of a very acute crisis, during which it will be much more difficult to select my successor than it would be in relatively peaceful times.

Our government, and more so Polish public opinion, will do their utmost to find a politician, that is a man who would more or less undertake to implement a political agenda hostile to the Union and our nation. There will always be a strong party that will want the promotion of the worst candidate for our ecclesiastical province and there will always be a candidate too weak to withstand the demands of the powerful, against whom there is no canonical reproach.

In the event that Your Holiness deigns to accept my request, I would have the opportunity to present my opinion and nothing would bind in the absolute liberty of the Apostolic See. I did and I think I can say in good conscience I can not have any other intention than the triumph of the great cause of the Union, to which I devoted my life that I would die a hundred times, and in which there is only the glory and triumph of the Apostolic See. For the salvation of the East is one of the greatest glories of the Holy See and the Pope.

Cardinal Husar's History

2011-02-10T06:00:00.001-08:00

Lubomyr Cardinal Husar ends his Historic Mandate

His Beatitude Lubomyr Cardinal Husar's life story is a series of historical firsts. Today, 10 February 2011, another historical event occurred when Pope Benedict XVI accepted his resignation as Major-Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (the Synod of Bishops accords him the title patriarch). This marks the first time that the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church has resigned on his own initiative. Indeed, there is no canonical provision for mandatory resignation of an Eastern Catholic patriarch or major-archbishop.

Cardinal Husar's biography includes the following historical firsts. As Head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church he was the first:

– to have lived most of his life outside of Ukraine, in the United States of America and Italy. Although some of the Kyivan Metropolitans were Greek, most of his predecessors lived in Ukrainian lands;

– to have begun his ministry as a secular priest but later embraced the monastic life. Virtually all of his predecessors were members of the Basilian Order. Since 1806 all have been secular priests with the exception of Metropolitan Sheptytsky.

– to have been Archimandrite of the Studite Monks before becoming head of the Ukrainian Church. Metropolitan Sheptytsky had founded the Studites and became their first archimandrite.

– to have been a regular professor at a pontifical university in Rome. Josyf Slipyj taught very briefly at the Gregoriana in 1922;

– to have received episcopal ordination without the papal mandate (1977);

– to have had his episcopal privileges confirmed by the pope and made public almost twenty years later (1996);

– to be appointed exarch of Kyiv-Vyshorod (1996);

– to have been designated a cardinal only a month after his election as major-archbishop (2001);

– not to have received a red hat during the public concistory. Isidore of Kyiv (1440), Sylvester Sembratovych (1895) and Slipyj (1965) received the ancient gallero. Lubachivsky (1985) received a red kolpak (Greek-Catholic biretta).

– to have welcomed a Roman Pontiff to his diocese (2001);

– to become Major-Archbishop of Kyiv-Halych upon the return of the primatial see from Lviv to Kyiv (2004);

– to have participated in a papal conclave (2005);

– to have lost his eyesight during his mandate;

– to have willingly submitted his resignation to the Roman Pontiff. Josyf Sembratovych had been forced to resign in 1882.

– to be present at the installation of his successor.

Help this Research Continue

2011-01-04T11:29:00.000-08:00

As a writer and researcher, I receive half the wages but work three times as hard. Expenses exceed remuneration. Many people have told me how much they enjoy reading this blog. The research behind it has been enabled by the unique privilege of being able to be close to the Vatican sources. This costs. Please help my research continue for now and for the future. Kindly donate whatever you can through paypal. I will be honoured to remember each donation at the Holy and Divine Liturgy.

Giovanni Battista Montini in Warsaw

2010-12-20T05:10:00.000-08:00

Reasons behind his recall to Rome

Very little has been written about the future Pope Paul VI’s five-month sojourn in Warsaw. Biographers concur that something went wrong, prompting Father Giovanni Battista Montini’s recall to Rome in the Fall of 1923. Poor health is invariably mentioned but vaguely, without identifying the malaise. Some authors also suggest that Montini might not have been suited for the work of second secretary at the Warsaw Nunciature. Recently, I have uncovered a few documents which shed light on the nature of the youthful Father Montini’s illness and the circumstances which led to his return to the Vatican.

The Warsaw Nunciature was shut down at the end of the Eighteenth Century after the final partition of Poland-Lithuania. Pope Benedict XV reestablished it in 1919 after Poland regained its independence and named his apostolic visitor to Poland, Achille Ratti, as nuncio, upon the request of the Polish government. Ratti was named cardinal-archbishop of Milan in 1921 and in February 1922 was elected Pope Pius XI. Within a year, the new pope was to unknowingly approve the assignment to the same nunciature of his successor in both the archbishopric of Milan and the papacy.

Ratti had been succeeded as Polish nuncio by Lorenzo Lauri in October 1921. Lauri inherited Ratti’s staff, the auditor (first secretary) Erminigildo Pellegrinetti and second secretary Antonio Farfoli. Pellegrinetti had come with Ratti to Warsaw in 1918 and Farfoli joined the nunciature’s staff in April 1920. Pellegrinetti was destined for higher things. He had competently acted as chargé d’affairs, running the nunciature from June to October 1921 until Lauri reached Warsaw. In March 1922, Pius XI named his former secretary Pellegrinetti to be the first nuncio to Yugoslavia. He was replaced as auditor in Warsaw by Carlo Chiarlo while Farfoli retained his position as second secretary.

The climate in Warsaw proved to be very taxing on the health of the Italian clergy, who invariably served at the nunciature. Monsignor Farfoli’s health began to fail at the beginning of 1923. On 18 January, the nuncio sent a dispatch to Monsignor Pizzardo of the papal secretariat of State (Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs), explaining that Farfoli had been in bed for ten days with phlebitis in the left leg. “Obviously the cold climate is not best for such illnesses and the doctor has ordered hot baths as soon as the season will allow him.” Lauri then asked for a replacement, referring to a recent meeting in Rome when Pizzardo had mentioned Montini’s name for the first time:

If you decide to recall him [Farfoli] for another destination, I would ask Your Most Reverend Excellency to not take long to send me another secretary, since the work here is rather intense. Your Excellency spoke to me of a certain Mondini [sic] that you said you thought was most suitable in every respect. I have no objection whatever to the contrary, not knowing him personally and trusting blindly in the opinion of your Excellency.

It appears that Monsignor Pizzardo intended to send Montini to Warsaw as an experiment or at least for only a short period of ‘field work’. This can be understood from Lauri’s next letter to Pizzardo, dated 11 February:

Regarding Father Montini, I will accept him with open arms because he is coming from You and in the hope that he will grow to like this nunciature and decide to remain, at least for the next winter, to brave that cold that many fear but which has not yet killed the nuncio.

But Montini was not the only candidate. Apostolic Visitor to Ukraine, Father Giovanni Genocchi, had been attempting have an ecclesiastical appointed to Warsaw who would be most familiar with the Eastern Catholic Churches. He suggested Monsignor Margotti of the Oriental Congregation. Nuncio Lauri, in turn, suggested that Farfoli be destined for the Oriental Congregation “especially for his knowledge of the Ruthenian question.”

As to the choice between them, on 19 February, Lauri wrote to Pizzardo:

Not knowing either Montini or Margotti I have no greater preference for one than for the. I leave Your Excellency in complete freedom. Send me a intelligent young man, of good character and as soon as possible, and I will be content.

Pizzardo was notoriously slow and no secretary was to be had for another three months. On 24 April, Lauri wrote again, this time asking for Margotti:

Father Genocchi spoke so well to me of Monsignor Margotti that I believe that he would be most useful to this Nunciature, especially for his knowledge of Polish.

Possibly this dispatch or further pressure for the rival finally induced Pizzardo to send his protégé Montini to Warsaw. Montini’s personnel file in the nunciature’s archives has been completely emptied except for a single folio, a telegram send to Nuncio Lauri on 6 June 1922:

I will arrive Wednesday evening at 8:00 pm. Regards. Montini

During his service, Montini does appear to have been mentioned in any of the official dispatches to the secretariat of state, at least not those drafts currently found in the Warsaw Nunciature’s archives. He was mentioned briefly by Monsignor Chiarlo in connection with the affair of the return of the return of Metropolitan Sheptytsky to Lviv.

On 14 September 1923, Chiarlo wrote that, in his absence, Montini had annswered the telephone call from the Polish Ambassador to the Holy See, informing the nunciature that an agreement had been reached allowing Sheptytsky to return to his see.

No further news of Montini occurs until after his departure. The following letter from Lauri to Pizzardo, dated 11 October 1923, sheds much light on what had occurred to warrant the recall of the young ecclesiastical adept:

Yesterday don G. B. Montini departed for Italy, authorized to return to Rome by the telegram of the 2^nd current of this Secretariat of State. As soon as I arrived in Warsaw, I discovered that, on the previous day, Don Montini had been visited by house doctor, Mr. Markiewicz, who is well known to Holy Father. The Auditor [Chiarlo] questioned this doctor if he believed the harsh winter in Warsaw could be dangerous for Don Montini. He replied that he was healthy in body but, at the same time, he had discovered that his heart had not developed in proportion to the body, which was the cause of the ailments that Don Montini felt from time to time. Despite this, he considered that Don Montini, if he did not expose himself by leaving the house on the coldest and windiest days or during cold rain, could endure without danger even the most terrible days of winter in this capital.

Still, from what I was able to learn myself on my return to Warsaw, I also shared the opinion of Dr. Markiewicz. However, according to that which had been agreed with Your Most Reverend Excellency, I thought to obtain the opinion of another physician, a specialist in heart diseases. An appointment had already been made when he received the aforementioned telegram, which made further investigation unnecessary. I am happy to report that I was and am happy with the performance of the young Don Montini, who proved to be intelligent, hard working, pious, polite, and educated, just as Your Excellency so rightly had described him to me.

Lauri then asked for Carlo Margotti once more but Margotti was destined to remain in the Oriental Congregation until 1930.

These dispatches appear to contradict the hypothesis that Lauri, somehow dissatisfied with Montini’s work, had asked Pizzardo to recall him. The documents removed from Montini’s personnel file would shed further light on the topic but they will not likely be made available for consultation for many years to come, if at all.

Audience of the Saints and Blessed

2010-11-10T02:59:00.000-08:00

Pius X receives Nykyta Budka

Blessed Nykyta Budka often recalled his life-changing meeting with the reigning pontiff, Pope Pius X, in November 1912. On his way from Austrian Galicia to Canada, Budka stopped in Vienna for an audience with his sovereign, Emperor Franz Jozef I, and in Rome with the Pope. Pius X was a rigorous man with a gentle heart. The Servant of God, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, also had life-changing meetings with this saintly Pope, who would be canonized in 1954. The following is Blessed Budka's account of the papal audience written on the occasion of his Ad limina apostolorum visit to Rome in December 1922:

The words of the Holy Father Pius X of worthy memory, spoken to me in blessing my mission, are truly the following: “Your diocese is the largest in the whole world. But I rejoice in seeing you so young. You have a very wide territory so you can fly. You cannot do everything, so do what you can. You cannot lose your people because you have two treasures. I well know thus about the Ruthenian people: your people loves the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and the Most Blessed Sacrament [of the Eucharist]. With these treasures, you cannot lose your people. Go with confidence.

Galician Ciphers Deciphered

2010-10-16T01:57:00.000-07:00

The diplomatic representatives of state and civic bureaucracies often send sensitive and or secret communications using coded or ciphered messages. The Western Ukrainian Republic's government-in-exile (ZUNR) did not have the technical means to use ciphers but did make use of creative codes in sharing sensitive information.

I have discovered two amusing examples of coded messages on behalf of ZUNR diplomatists. On 5 January 1923, a curious letter, obviously in code, was sent to finance minister Volodymyr Singalevych from their representative in Rome, Volodymyr Bandrivsky. Writing on the stationary of the Hotel Quirinale, Bandrivsky reported that "one of their men in Western Europe" had written him the following:

“Керзон каже, що Костеви не було чого трудитися аж до Льондону їздити, бо Whiskey можна було знайти і у Відні; а як би був написав Витвицькому, то той був би вистарався йому фляшечку і міг би був еї йому передати через Панейка. [Curzon says that Kost [Levytsky] had no reason to take the trouble to come all the way to London because whiskey can also be found in Vienna; and if he had written to Vytsvytsky [the foreign Minister], the latter could have obtained a bottle for him and passed it on through Paneyko.]”

A second example of amusing codes can be found in telegram from ZUNR to Singalevych. In March 1923, Petrushevych had left Vienna for Paris, in anticipation of the final decision of the Allied Council of Ambassadors regarding the sovereignty of Eastern Galicia. On 15 March, when the Council granted de jure sovereignty to Poland, with the condition of a special autonomous statute for the region, Petrushevych sent the following telegram to Singalevych:

"roman decide pour claudia avec condition statut a definir par roman [roman rules in favour of claudia with the proviso [of a] statute to be defined by roman.]" Unlike the January communication, Singalevych penciled in the identity of the code names, roman being "Р. Амб.", the Council of Ambassadors, and claudia "Польща", Poland.

Canadian Ukrainians Pray for the Monarch

2010-08-21T15:13:00.000-07:00

Since I don't have time for a full article this month, I would simply like to post this excerpt, as a follow-up to an earlier article on the Prayers for the Head of State. Much new material has come to light and, in future, I hope to rework this earlier article.

"... In particular, I observe that the abolition of the prayer for the Sovereign is not justifiable in the territory of this [Canadian] Ordinariate, where the King of England exercises sovereignty. The oriental rites admit the liturgical prayer for the supreme civil authority and therefore in Canada the Catholics of the Oriental Rite do not have a motive to make changes in this matter."

– Cardinal Eugène Tisserant to Bishop Vasyl Ladyka, 25 January 1939.

Volodymyr Singalevych von Schilling

2010-07-11T02:30:00.000-07:00

And his Austrian Archive (1911-1930)

Over the years, I have come across the name of Volodymyr Singalevych in correspondence between Ukrainian political organizations and the Apostolic See. Recently, I accidentally discovered his archives. However, when I searched for biographical information about him, I was surprised to discover that almost nothing is available. Like Jan Tokarzhevsky-Karashevych, Singalevych has virtually disappeared from history.

There are short entries on Singalevych in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine and the Екциклопедіа Українознавства. Even Vasyl Kuchabsky's history of the ZUNR (Західна Українська Національна Республіка), recently republished by CIUS in English, does not mention him, despite the fact that he was one of the inner core of Galician parliamentarians and founders of the ZUNR.

To understand the ZUNR one needs to understand something about the men who gave it birth. They generally came from Greek-Catholic priestly families, were lawyers and became political activists in the best Austrian Josephist tradition. Singalevych was literally a member of this club, though he did not embrace the usual Josephist disdain for the Church.

A Brief Biographical Sketch

Volodymyr Singalevych was Born 13 January 1875 in Miskakivtsi, Kosiv district (Ivano-Frankivsk) to a clerical gentry family descended from the German Schillings. In 1893 he graduated from the faculty of law of the University of Lviv and subsequently worked in civil courts in Kamianka-Strymylova (Kamianka-Buzko), Peremyshliany and Hlynjan.

Some years before the First World War he was created Ritter Singalewycz von Schilling (similar to a baronetcy). I have been unable to find the precise date of his ennoblement but it is likely that it took place around 1911, the year that Stefan Smal-Stotsky was also ennobled with the lesser, titleless distinction of edler. As Singalevych held the highest civil rank among his fellow Ukrainian parliamentarians, his signature always appeared first before those who, with the fall of the Monarchy, were to play a more prominent role in Ukrainian affairs. For example, men such as Yevhen Petrushevych and Kost Levytsky.

As a member of Ukrainian National Democratic Party, Singalevych served as a deputy in the Austrian lower house from 1911-1918 and in the the Galician Diet from 1913-1914. He became a leading member of the Ukrainian Supreme Council in September 1914 and was appointed by this council as commander of the War Council of the Sichovi Striltsi regiment in Vienna. In that same month, Galician and Bukovynan deputies had met in Vienna to discuss the situation of the refugees from the Russian-occupied zones. Singalevych served on a government-funded Ukrainian Assistance Committee which dealt with Ukrainian refugees and internees, such as those in the Tallerhoff camp. The committee also solicited funds from the Diaspora to support Ukrainian economic institutions at home.

Volodymyr Singalevych took part in the preparations for the 1 November 1918 uprising, organzied and implemented Ukrainian rule in Stryj and the neighboring districts and was a member of ZUNR and ZO UNR Radas from 1918-1919. During the Polish-Ukrainian War he was arrested and briefly interned following which he left Galicia and worked in Vienna in the Austrian Liquidation Commission. On 3 April 1919 he was appointed ZUNR diplomatic representative to Austria. Petrushevych named him acting finance and trade minister on 1 August 1920 and, two years later, he assumed the porfolio of acting internal minister. Following the 15 March 1923 decision of the Council of Ambassadors to definitively allocate Eastern Galicia to Poland, Singalevych helped dismantle the remainig apparatus of the ZUNR Government-in-Exile.

Among his peers, Singavelych could be singled out for his strong Catholic religious convictions. Evidence of this fact is found in the correspondence he carried on throughout the 1920's with Greek-Catholic notables such as Metropolitan Sheptytsky, Father Lazar Beresovzky, Father (later Bishop) Ivan Buchko, and Mitrat Vojnarovsky. Vojnarovsky was instrumental in helping Singalevych obtain political amnesty from the President of Poland in 1930, allowing him to return to his homeland. From 1930 to 1939 Singalevych served as director of the Agricultural Bank of Lviv and in January 1931 became a founding member of the Ukrainian Catholic Union, an above-party coalition envisioned by Metropolitan Sheptytsky in the wake of the increasing brutality of the Piłsudski dictatorship, including the Pacification of 1930-1932.

The Singalevych Archive

Volodymyr Singalevych's archive contains correspondence from a large section of the Ukrainian notables from 1911-1930. Here are a just a few examples: Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky wrote in 1912 concerning the Ukrainian University. There is also a telegram to Petrushevych from Sheptytsky in October 1918. During the First World War, Basilian missionary Father Marian Shkirpan took up a small collection from his poor parishioners in Brazil (Prudentopolis, 13 July 1915) and sent it to the Assistance Committee to help at home. Shkirpan wrote: “Бразильска Україна відчуває моє страшне горе, яке навістило стару відчизну, тому радо прийдуть впомїч."

Olha Kobylianska, wrote several letters to obtain financial support. Kobylianska’s first letter, dated Чернівцї 11/4 915, describes her sad situation: "... Справді, ніколи не думала і не моглам сподіватися я, що попаду колись в моїм життю, в страшнім віку в таке страшне матеріяльне положення в ким злакаюся тепер в раз своєю старшою сестрою її домомом, і тим що мене (від 11. років хоровиту) доглядаюсь...” On 16 June, she wrote: “Війна настала, школи позачинювані, ... а літературна праця (не лиш моя, а других) де она опинилася? Літературна праця, та одгичка точка що вже мене ще до землі задає охоти...” Singalevych was able to send her funds, for which she thanked him heartily with a postcard (16 June 1915).

Singalevych’s archives also contain letters from international politicians and notables, such as one from the future Pope Pius XII, Msgr. Eugenio Pacelli to Count Michael Tyshkevych (9 January 1915). There is also a letter from Hungarian minister von Burian (22 September 1914 ).

In 1916, the Supreme Ukrainian Council (calling itself Pro-Senate) attempted to intervene with the Holy See in the appointment of the new Greek-Catholic bishop for Przemysl. Singalevych was among the signatories. They presented a tern of candidates to the Apostolic Nuncio in Vienna: Klymenti Sheptytsky, Josyf Zhuk and Oleksi Baziuk. When Josaphat Kotsylovsky was appointed the following year, they intervened without result against the nomination.

Two letters of great interest came into his possession, from Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg (Василь Вишиваний) (12 and 27 October 1918), one of which has a beautiful red paper seal with his archducal coat-of-arms on the reverse side of the envelope. The archive also contains a printed copy of Emperor Karl's 16 October 1918 imperial manifesto which changed the Monarchy into a federation of nations, at least on paper. We also find the guest-list and speech given at a banquet in honour of the newly-appointed Apostolic Visitor to Ukraine, Father Giovanni Genocchi, who passed through Vienna in April 1920.

Volodymyr Singalevych died on 7 November 1945 in Bregen, Austria. This 35-box archive represents his activity in Vienna, it was certainly located in the Austrian capital until he returned to Galicia in 1930. Afterwards it was entrusted to Metropolitan Sheptytsky (as indicated on the archival boxes), who probably left it in the care of either Cyrille Korolevskij or his procurator Msgr. Enrico Benedetti. Further research should determine specific details of its itinerary.

For over a decade, the current archivist of the Oriental Congregation, Dr. Gianpaolo Rigotti, has sought discover the identity of the Singalevych collection. His research revealed the following: his predecessor, Monsignor Stasys Žilys, archivist from 1962 to 1992, erroneously listed it as Fondo Archivio Politico Szeptyckij on page 35 of his inventory of the Congregation's holdings. Until 2000, together with the other Ruthenian and Ukrainian fonds, the Singalevych collection was located on the second floor of the archives. During the complete renovation of the Congregation's archival rooms, which took place from June 2000 to March 2001, all of the dicastery's fonds were removed. The so-called Fondo Szeptyckij was transfered to an underground facility near the Via dei Corridori, which had been restructured for storage purposes in 1998. Subsequently, the fond in question was returned to the third floor of the fully renovated archives, where are stored the oldest materials acquired from the former Sacred Congregation De Propaganda Fide for the Affairs of the Oriental Rite. In the autumn of 2006, Rigotti called upon the renowned historian and orientalist, Msgr. Giuseppe M. Croce to help determine the content and importance of the collection. Having been made aware of the identity of Volodymyr Singalevych from documents contained in the Vatican Secret Archives, I was able to clarify the precise identity of this fond.

In examining the Singalevych papers, it becomes immediately clear that, per se, not only does the archive have nothing to do with Sheptytsky (except that it had been entrusted temporarily to his care) but that it represents a personal and not an institutional collection. Although it does contain many documents emitted by the Ukrainian Supreme Council and the ZUNR, it also contains private and personal communications, documents that are seldom included in institutional collections. The Singalevych archive itself was not produced for the Ukrainian Government; it was rather meant to be an historical record of a portion of the life (public and private) of its onetime officials.

It might seem odd that such an archive continues to be housed inside the Oriental Congregation. However, at least for the present, I strongly believe that the continuing care of the Singalevych fond by this Vatican department has several advantages. For instance, although the archival boxes themselves are currently in a bad state of repair, unlike other important Ukrainian archives housed in Ukrainian institutions, (such as those of the ZUNR) the documents themselves are intact, safe, under the supervision of a highly competent professional historian. Most imporantly, they are accessible to scholars with the authorization of the Congregation's superiors.

Monsignor Enrico Benedetti (1874-1941)

2010-06-08T10:03:00.000-07:00

Among History’s Vanished

The archivist of the Oriental Congregation, Gianpaolo Rigotti’s recent article “Uomini e attività della Congregazione per la Chiesa Orientale tra i motu proprio Dei providentis (1917) e Sancta Dei Ecclesia (1938)” deals with key figures that served the Congregation of the Oriental Church(es). However, one person is conspicuously absent from among these figures: Monsignor Enrico Benedetti. For twenty years, Benedetti was one of the most important employees of the two oriental departments of the Roman Curia, from 1904 to 1924. After this date he largely vanishes from history and obtaining his biographical data continues to be difficult. There are few overt references to his person and activities in the archives of the Oriental Congregation but, surprisingly, more significant information is to be found in other archives of the Apostolic See and in works dealing with Ukraine and the Greek-Catholic Church. Recently, Benedetti’s memory was brought back to life by the research of Monsignor Giuseppe M. Croce. In his now famous edition of Cyrille Korolevskij’s autobiography and correspondence, there are significant references to Benedetti, a protagonist of Byzantine Catholicism in the Roman Curia. Croce’s work has finally lifted the veil from the mystery of aspects of Benedetti’s curial career. This brief biography, based on what appears to be left of Benedetti’s personal file and supplemented by other archival sources, is intended as a modest addition to such research.

Enrico Benedetti was born in Rome in 1874 and was ordained for his native diocese in 1897, at the age of twenty-three. He subsequently obtained a teaching degree, as well as degrees in theology and in canon law, the latter for which he received top marks. In 1899 he was taken on provisionally at the Congregation of the Council [of the Clergy]. On 13 January 1900, he was given the chair of letters at the schools of the Pontifical Urban College run by the Sacred Congregation De Propaganda Fide where he later taught ecclesiastical history. It was in this teaching capacity that Angelo Roncalli (future Blessed John XXIII) remembered Benedetti in his famous memoirs, Journal of a Soul.

Propaganda Fide called Benedetti to additional responsibilities in 1904. At that time the minutante for the Ruthenian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Georgian Rite affairs received another posting and resigned his charge at the Congregation. According to the custom of the time, Italian priests were asked to submit their names for the vacant post. Among the eighteen contestants, Benedetti ranked among the top three for “the best physical, intellectual and moral requisites.” Benedetti was further prized for his knowledge of Greek, French and a little English and German. On 4 July 1904, the cardinals selected Benedetti and Pope Pius X approved the selection the following 12 July. The new minutante was informed of his appointment in a letter from the Assessor of the Sacred Congregation De Propaganda Fide for the Affairs of the Oriental Rite, Monsignor Savelli Spinola, dated the following day.

When Pope Benedict XV suppressed the old Congregation De Propaganda for the Affairs of the Oriental Rite, in 1917, Benedetti passed over to the newly created Congregation Pro Ecclesia Orientali [for the Oriental Church]. In the new department, his past faithful service and expertise earned him the promotion from simple minutante to official, in which capacity he could co-sign documents with the cardinal-secretary or the bishop-assessor. Additionally, Don Enrico was granted the honourary distinction of papal chamberlain which carried with it the title of Monsignor.

The new Congregation was charged with demonstrating a more sympathetic image to Eastern-Rite Christians and its modus operandi was to be exclusively attuned to their needs. For this purpose the Pope chose Cardinal Marini, who had a certain interest in oriental scholarship, as the Congregation’s head. As second-in-command the Pope chose a Greek-Catholic, Bishop Isaias Papadopulos.

Among those who showed the greatest interest in the Christian East was Monsignor Benedetti himself, especially in his area of competency, the Greco-Slavic Churches, the largest among which was the Byzantine-Ruthenian, which comprised several of what we now call ecclesiae sui iuris. Benedetti soon began publishing material about the history of the Ruthenian Churches. In 1916 he published Punti di storia religiosa del popolo ruteno (Notes on the Religious History of the Ruthenian People) in Cardinal Marini’s journal Bessarione. The article was later printed as a booklet. Another important work appeared in 1922, entitled Le Chiese Orientali (The Oriental Churches).

One of the early issues that the new Oriental Congregation had to tackle was the Ukrainian problem. Benedetti had developed a relationship of trust with the Ukrainian Catholic hierarchs, the most senior of which was Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. Ukrainian political leaders, Catholic and Orthodox, also reached out to the Apostolic See to secure political recognition. In exchange for which they promised freedom for Catholicism in Ukraine, especially for the Eastern-Rite variant. The Congregation, however, was not authorized to address political questions. These were the responsibility of the papal Secretariat of State and the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, which dealt with any religious questions connected with state governments. The Ukrainian question was, in the language of the Curia, a questione politico-religioso (a political-religious mix). The religious values that the Apostolic See intended to promote were intertwined with the political questions of the day. And therein lie the seeds of conflict over Ukraine within the Roman Curia.

With Europe in flux, Benedict XV and his secretary of state Cardinal Gasparri showed significant openness to Ukrainian independence. In 1919 an extraordinary Ukrainian diplomatic representation was received at the papal court. In turn, the Oriental Congregation recommended a papal representative to the Ukraine. Such a pontifical liaison was to assess the situation and present the religious goals of the Apostolic See to Ukrainian notables. The Pope accepted these recommendations and appointed Father Giovanni Genocchi as apostolic visitor to Ukraine.

But who recommended Genocchi to this post? According to his friend and biographer Vincenzo Ceresi: “Enrico Benedetti was a faithful admirer of the religious and devoted to him like a son.” Genocchi’s charming personality had made him many friends in Italian social and intellectual circles but these associations had made him enemies in the Curia, especially during the Modernist Crisis. As had been his predecessor Pius X, so too was Benedict XV an admirer of Genocchi and recognized his fidelity. Pope Benedict sought Monsignor Benedetti’s counsel to find a way to remove Genocchi from the climate of curial suspicion. Benedetti proposed the apostolic visitation to Ukraine and Eastern Galicia at the beginning of February 1920 and, according to Ceresi, the Pope accepted the proposal a week later, naming Genocchi on 13 February.

The instructions that Genocchi received from the Oriental Congregation in March 1920 had been composed by Benedetti and contained a long and sympathetic summary of the history of Ruthenian-Ukrainian questions. Don Enrico’s sympathy was keenly felt by Ukraine’s religious and political men, who, together with Genocchi, corresponded privately with him, seeking counsel and encouragement.

Benedetti also helped many Ukrainian priests. Through the mediation of Ukrainian diplomatic representative Father François-Xavier Bonne, in January 1920 Don Enrico arranged for the future Cardinal Josyf Slipyj to further his studies in Rome. Slipyj received funding through the Congregation for which he wrote to thank Benedetti in November. Two years later, with the Ukrainian diplomatic cause going badly, Bonne himself received a stipend through Benedetti’s intercession.

The turning point in Enrico Benedetti’s curial career occurred at the beginning of 1922 regarding political ramifications to the Ukrainian religious question; namely, the restoration of the ancient Byzantine bishopric of Lutsk.

Metropolitan Sheptytsky had ordained Josyf Botsian Bishop of Lutsk (Volyn) in 1914, using special powers granted him secretly by Pius X. But when Botsian attempted to begin his mission in Volyn he was blocked by Polish civil and religious notables. They feared that the restoration of the illegally suppressed Greek-Catholic Eparchy of Lutsk would help the Ukrainian independence movement and block centuries-old Polish hegemony over the territory. Following his release from Russian captivity in 1917, Sheptytsky made repeated attempts to have Botsian’s appointment legitimized. Finally in 1921, Metropolitan Andrei was able to prove to Benedict XV the existence of the secret faculties granted by Pius X. Thus on 21 February 1921, Pope Benedict did not hesitate to confirm Botsian’s appointment. However, due to the extreme opposition to Botsian in Poland, the Pontiff added the reservation that, although truly Bishop of Lutsk, until a modus vivendi with the Polish government could be achieved, Botsian was not to exercise episcopal jurisdiction.

One of Monsignor Benedetti’s duties was to correct the drafts of the papal Catholic directory, the Annuario Pontificio. In doing so, he added the name of Josyf Botsian under the resident diocese of Lutsk. Shortly before his death in January 1922, Benedict XV had examined these notations but had made neither comment nor objection. During the sede vacante, Polish prelates in the Curia put pressure on the papal secretariat of state to have the entries removed. Monsignor Borgongini Duca ordered the head of the Annuario to remove Botsian’s name but the priest in charge replied that, since the late Pope had approved the drafts, he required a written order. Borgongini complied with the request and the name was removed from the list of resident bishops (page 161). However, the priest-in-charge apparently forgot to remove the name from the index (page 902). Several copies of the first and second editions had already gone into circulation, before the third and final edition removed Botsian’s name altogether.

News about the original versions of the Annuario reached Ukrainian diplomatic representatives resulting in a series of articles in the Italian journal Il Popolo Romano, written by the secretary of the Ukrainian Legation in Vienna, Volodymyr Bandrivsky. A diplomatic incident occurred, resulting in vehement protests from the Polish Legation to the Holy See. Following an internal investigation, Cardinal Gasparri wrote a strong letter to Cardinal Marini blaming Monsignor Benedetti for divulging confidential information. Gasparri argued that, Benedetti, who had added the entries by hand, could not possibly be free from blame because he was aware that the late Pope had ruled that Botsian was not to exercise episcopal jurisdiction. “Mons. Benedetti put the Holy See in a very embarrassing position before the Polish Government.”

Benedetti ardently denied the charge but someone had to take the blame. Recently uncovered archival sources point to the fact that Ukrainian priests in Rome had been the source of the information, especially Basilian Father Lazar Berezovsky who carried on written correspondence with the Ukrainian diplomatic representatives. Pius XI was very annoyed by the incident, especially by the fact that Ukrainian politics seemed to be limiting the Church’s freedom of action. As a result, Cardinal Gasparri summoned Father Berezovsky, informing him that the Pope did not want to hear of “Ukrainians” but only “Ruthenians”. The rector retorted that they were indeed Ukrainians and that no one had the right to take away their name.

The upshot was that the Apostolic See had to give strong assurances to the Polish Government that Bishop Botsian (at least for the time being) would remain a bishop in name only. Enrico Benedetti received a reprimand in kind: his name was also removed from one section of the Annuario, the list of papal chamberlains. This honour, once conferred, remained in force only during the lifetime of the reigning Pope but had to be reconfirmed by his successor. Father Cyrille Korolevskij recounted the affair to Metropolitan Sheptytsky three months later, ended his letter by stating that “Today, the incident has calmed down but Benedetti was not confirmed in his title of “Monsignor” by the new Pope, who said: “We’ll see about it later.”

Even though he was soon restored to his monsignorial title, the Lutsk-Annuario incident had marked Benedetti’s curial career at the very inception of the new pontificate. In Korolevskij’s words: “Benedetti [...] is not in the [new] Pope’s good graces.” The Polish legation was especially on guard against any initiatives of Bendetti and his department, whose attempts to protect Eastern Catholics were regarded as inimical to Poland. Ambassador Skrzyński complained to Genocchi that "as long as Msgr. Benedetti is there, nothing good will be done" by the Oriental Congregation. Leading Polish curialist Monsignor Kazimierz Skirmunt suggested that Botsian’s title be changed without the knowledge of the Congregation so that it "and with it the whole Oriental universe" would not be given the opportunity to protest. Benedetti earned further papal displeasure in 1924, due to his participation in that year's Velehrad Congress. Pius XI complained that he did not want members of the Congregation to participate at such events in an official capacity.

The Oriental Congregation’s wings had been clipped in March 1922. Shortly after the Annuario incedent, its head, Cardinal Marini became ill and was replaced by Cardinal Tacci. Marini had not demonstrated any remarkable capacity and Tacci turned out to be even worse, particularly due to an undiscovered brain tumour. During the latter’s term, many affairs were left unresolved and a number of important documents were mislaid, only to be found among the cardinals papers after his death. By 1924, in the words of Korolevskij, Benedetti had become “disgusted”. He left the Congregation on 31 December 1924 and passed to the Vatican Library the following year.

Although he ceased active service, Enrico Benedetti was well respected in the Roman Curia for his erudition and for many years of service he had given in no less than three Vatican departments. As a result, following his curial retirement, Don Enrico was called upon to serve as consulter to the Consitorial and Oriental Congregations; charges which he fulfilled until his death.

The Ruthenian bishops would have been devastated to see one of their few overt sympathizers retire from the Roman Curia. The relationship of trust that they had formed with Benedetti induced Metropolitan Sheptytsky to propose him for yet one more service. At their Episcopal Conference of 1928, the Ruthenian hierarchs of Poland (Ukrainians) and Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia (Carpatho-Ruthenians) and Bulgaria agreed to Sheptytsky’s proposal to appoint Benedetti as their man in Rome. On 8 July 1928, Sheptytsky wrote to Monsignor Giuseppe Pizzardo, head of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, asking him if the Curia had any objection to the bishops’ recommendation: The Bishops “considered Msgr. Enrico Benedetti, whom all have known for a long time, and who has always shown great devotion to the interests of their Churches and possesses all the necessary experience.”

Pizzardo asked the opinion of Monsignor Eugène Tisserant, a co-worker of both Benedetti and Korolevskij at the Vatican Library. Tisserant replied that he could not see any difficulty with the appointment. The matter was then forwarded to the Oriental Congregation, which also found no objection. Cardinal Sincero wrote to Sheptytsky on 19 July 1928 that “This Sacred Congregation is very happy to inform Your Lordship that it has nothing against your wish [...] as it has nothing against the person chosen for this office.” Once he had received Benedetti’s consent, Sheptytsky formally presented him to the Apostolic See on 27 November 1928 as procurator of the Ruthenian Episcopate in Rome for the affairs of the Ruthenian Churches.

Being familiar with both worlds, Benedetti was perfectly suited to act as a liaison between the Roman Curial offices and the Ruthenian hierarchy. Among notable affairs handled, in 1929 he made important oral clarifications regarding the candidates for auxiliary bishop to Metropolitan Sheptytsky. Two years later, in 1931, he rendered an important service when, together with Korolevskij, he was consulted by the Congregation on the history and status of Sheptytsky’s title Metropolitan of Halych, as distinct from to that of Archbishop of Lviv and Bishop of Kamiamets-Podilsk.

In his final years, Benedetti endured a long illness. Shortly before his death, which occured on Monday, 10 March 1941, he received a special blessing from Pope Pius XII. Monsignor Professor Enrico Benedetti’s funeral took place three days later, on Thursday, 13 March 1941, at the Roman parish church of the Sacred Heart on the Lungotevere Prati. The funeral rites were attended by numerous officials of the Oriental Congregation, among whom many counted themselves as admirers of their former colleague. Eugène Tisserant, now the cardinal-secretary of that department, subequently paid high tribute to Benedetti’s example of generous and loyal service to the Church.

Benedetti's memory continued to endure in the tiny community of Ukrainian priests and religious in the Eternal City, especially among those whom he had known and helped. As late as 1998, Ukrainian historian Liliana Hentosh identified his photograph, still displayed in the corridors of Piazza Madonna dei Monti, the seat of the Ukrainian procurature. The photo had been displayed at the orders of Cardinal Slipyj, whose first Roman sojourn had been arranged by Benedetti. Sadly, with recent renovations to the Madonna residence, even this last vestige of his memory has vanished.

A Lack of Tact and of Delicacy

2010-05-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Difficult Relations between Archbishops Sheptytsky and Twardowski of Lviv

Many publications have dealt with the relations between the Servant of God Andrei Sheptytsky and Saint Józef Bilczewski, respectively metropolitan-archbishops of the Byzantine-Ruthenian (Ukrainian) and Latin Catholic archdioceses of Lviv. However, relatively little has been said about the relations between Sheptytsky and Bilczewski’s successor Bołesław Twardowski. The following is a very brief sketch of some of the principal issues of contention between the two prelates, based on Vatican archival materials from 1922-1939.

The poor relations between Sheptytsky and Bilczewski were notorious. The main cause of the conflict was the fact that both were the spiritual heads of two peoples with opposing national-political aspirations over the same territory. Between Sheptytsky and Bilczewski there can be said to have reigned a certain equality. Ecclesiastically speaking, there was no question of seniority between them. Both had been elected metropolitan-archbishop of Lemberg (Lwów/Lviv) in 1900. However, civil inequalities did exist between them. Sheptytsky belonged to a noble family whereas Bilczewski came from humble origins. In should be kept in mind, however, that, in their class system, becoming a bishop was similar to ennoblement. In Christendom, it was accepted that the spiritual realm was superior to the temporal. Therefore, in anciens regimes, the Premiere Estate was the clergy not the nobility. Another point of civil inequality was that, during the Austrian regime, Sheptytsky held influential state offices such as Vice-Marshall of the Galician diet and Privy Counsellor to the Emperor. The divergence between the two ecclesiastics came to a head during the electoral reform of 1913 and, particularly, during the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918-1920. In both conflicts, the churchmen took opposing political sides.

When Bilczewski died in March 1923, Sheptytsky was still waiting in Rome to be allowed to return to Lviv. Vatican officials were very careful in choosing Bilczewski’s successor, in an attempt to avoid further conflicts between the Latin and Greek Catholics. The papal envoy for Ukrainian affairs, Father Giovanni Genocchi, attended Bilczewski on his deathbed and testified that the future saint sincerely regretted the conflict with the Ukrainians (while still placing the burden of blame upon them). Following Bilczewski’s death, the papal nuncio deputized Genocchi to be his representative at the funeral. Noting that the event had been well attended by the Greek-Catholic clergy, Genocchi commented that “it is said that both Latins and Ruthenians would be content with the Auxiliary Twardowski”. It is likely that Metropolitan Sheptytsky had also been questioned and almost certainly posed no objection to Twardowski’s nomination.

After Twardowski assumed the Latin see of Lviv, the main occasions of contention between him and Sheptytsky were: Twardowski’s choice for his auxiliary bishop; the agreement for inter-ritual marriages; and precedence and hospitality during visits of church dignitaries.

A diocesan bishop’s personal choice is usually given the highest consideration when and if he is granted an auxiliary or helper bishop. But in mid-war Eastern Galicia, each episcopal nomination was wrought with political difficulties. In granting Twardowski an auxiliary, the Apostolic See took the same issues into account that it had done when nominating him. It was vital to the ecclesial and social peace that an opponent of the Ukrainians not be selected. However, only a few months after assuming the archbishopric, Twardowski proposed such a man to the Pope, in the person of Father Miecysław Tarnawski, professor of the University of Lviv. Tarnawski had actually been Bilczewski’s choice for auxiliary because he shared many of his views. Twardowski, widely considered a secondary figure, sought to honour his predecessor’s wish. But Tarnawski had a terrible reputation among the Ukrainians and had even gone on printed record against them. At the bequest of Bilczewski, he had published a pamphlet entitled “The Uniate Church in Eastern Little Poland (Galicia) during the Russian invasion and the Ukrainian coup.” Above all, the pamphlet contained strong criticisms of Metropolitan Sheptytsky and claimed that the Ukrainian independence movement, “based on hatred, sooner or later must unite with radicalism, socialism and materialism.”

As the nunciature’s principal consultant in Galician affairs, Jesuit Provincial Superior Sopuck, had been instrumental in Twardowski’s election and was consulted again regarding Tarnawski. His response was not favourable, because Tarnawski was always considered the candidate of Bilczewski and the Endecja and the Ruthenians would be upset. Given Archbishop Twardowski’s insistence, the nuncio suggested that Father Tarnawski visit Metropolitan Sheptytsky and come to an understanding. Their meeting took place on 3 January 1924. Although Sheptytsky sent a favourable account, he nonetheless considered Tarnawski to be the least desirable candidate precisely because of his public reputation as an opponent of the Ukrainians. Indeed, the nuncio had already written to Tarnawski telling him as much.

Sheptytsky’s opinion was important but not decisive. Based on others’ views, the nunciature had already concluded that Tarnawski, despite his other good qualities, was a poor choice. Archbishop Twardowski, however, blamed Sheptytsky for blocking his candidate and complained to the Bishop of Katowice, August Hlond, future primate of Poland. Not knowing the facts, Hlond lamented to Nuncio Lauri that Archbishop Twardowski had been humiliated because the Vatican had given more weight to Sheptytsky’s opinion over his, in the matter of his own auxiliary bishop. But the Apostolic See would not waver.

Two years later, Father Tarnawski published another pamphlet entitled “Post-war difficulties of the Uniate Church in Little Poland”, in which he reversed his earlier antagonistic position towards Greek-Catholics. This time, even the Polish primate Cardinal Dalbor opposed the nomination because he considered the second work as insincere. Nuncio Lauri explained to Twardowski that “The Holy See still does not approve of that choice despite the fact that heaven and earth have been moved” to achieve it. Sheptytsky “would not say a word against Tarnawski because he knows that the Poles are convinced that he is the cause of the passed over nomination.” Twardowski then formally pleaded with Sheptytsky, who gave in and wrote directly to the Pope of Tarnawski’s good qualities. Still, the nomination never occured.

The second conflict between Sheptytsky and Twardowski occurred over changes to the agreement on inter-ritual marriages, known as the “Concordia” of 1863. Arguing that the 1917 Code of Canon Law had abolished the accord, Twardowski obtained an apparent relaxation. Sheptytsky insisted that it should remain in force because the Ukrainians in Poland were now in an inequitable position. Ironically, the ‘discord’ between the bishops resulted in the ‘Concord’ being left in force; the only mutation being that permission to change in rite, hitherto reserved to the Roman Curia, was devolved to the apostolic delegates and nuncios.

The third conflict between the two archbishops of Lviv occurred during two visits to the city by Hlond, now cardinal and primate of Poland. During the first visit of 1928, Hlond had led the Eucharistic procession and remarked on the absence of Sheptytsky and his clergy. A scandal occurred when Sheptytsky attended a civil ceremony to welcome the Cardinal but was absent from the religious function. Archbishop Twardowski claimed to have sent an invitation but Sheptytsky claimed not to have received it.

A ray of light shone through the clouded relations in January 1930, when Twardowski attended the celebration of Sheptytsky’s thirtieth anniversary as archbishop of Lviv. Metropolitan Andrei seemed determined to repair any hard feelings. Later that year, at the Eucharistic Congress of Poznan, Sheptytsky and his entourage made a great show of unity and his seminarians sang during the bishops’ dinner.

When Hlond returned to Lviv for a bishops’ meeting, at the end of 1930, in was the Greek-Catholic archbishop’s turn to play host. This time, the grand seigneur demonstrated the best traditions of noblesse oblige. An account by the brillant but tormented ecclesiastic, Count Piotr Tadeusz Rzewuski (who later renamed himself Father Kreuza), described the preparation for the fête:

A three-roomed apartment complete with servants was prepared for him, prepared and adorned with precious tapestries, an abundance of flowers, and works by a famous Polish painter. The archbishop’s servants wore the special livery for this occasion. [...] Kyr Sheptytsky went to meet him at the station with Kyr Budka, the Chapter and the principal priests of the city. The Cardinal took his place in the limousine and was received with the sacred candelabras of the oriental rite. Accompanied by dignitaries and his suite, he visited the Cathedral of St. George’s, kissed the icon of the patron saint, adored the Blessed Sacrament and paused for a moment before the miraculous Virgin of Trembovla, patron of the Union in Lviv.

But the visit and the year that had both begun so auspiciously were to end badly. The differences between the two prelates in class and education came to the fore at the beginning of the bishops’meeting. Twardowski began to pressure Cardinal Hlond to accept his hospitality, which Rzewuski noted was “the first lack of tact on the part of a guest”. Due to Twardowski’s insistence, the grand evening reception at the metropolitan’s palace, prepared and announced by invitation, had to be cancelled; “another lack of delicacy and an insult to the guests.” Twardowski monopolized the rest of the visit and the Cardinal ended by excusing himself thus: “I must leave or there will be a battle.” Twardowski did not show up for the rest of the conference, to the embarrassment of his auxiliary. In the end, Hlond departed for the airport accompanied only by the Ukrainians; the Latin archbishop had not sent his fine automobile, although this would have been proper as his counterpart had been responsible for the welcome ceremony. Whatever his intentions, Twardowski’s comportment had been a fiasco of decorum, something which would have been felt much more keenly by Sheptytsky.

Cardinal Hlond’s visit to Lviv coincided with beginning of a violent campaign. On the very night of his arrival, the police arrested 20 young men from the metropolitan’s orphanage. The day had likely been chosen as a provocation to upset the visit. These events preceded the political crackdown of 1931: the imprisonment and torture of Marshall Pilsudski’s political opponents; and the violent “Pacification” against the Ukrainian villages in response to the vandalism of Polish estates. This apparent lack of solidarity caused a further rift between the Greek and Latin rite hierarchies, the Ukrainian bishops having been hurt by their Polish counterparts silence during the pogroms. It was only Pius XI’s insistence that brought the Greek-Catholic prelates to the Polish Plenary Council, six years later.

Today it is difficult for many people from first-world societies to understand the rifts that existed in the Old Continent between the various nationalities, even among churchmen of the same faith. An objective, non-moralizing, reading helps us better comprehend such complicated events. Reflecting on some of the earlier tensions in the Sheptytsky-Twardowski relationship will help contextualize their Second-World-War correspondence, something which historians are now evaluating more attentively.

Zofia Fredro Szeptycka - Eternal Memory

2010-04-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

†

Le Comte JEAN de Szeptyce SZEPTYCKI, Membre de la Chambre des Paires en Autriche, député à la diète de Galicie, Chambellan de S.M. Apostolique, Chevalier de la Couronne de fer II. cl., Commandeur de l’ordre R. de St. Georges de Bavière, Chevalier de l’ordre souverain de St. Jean de Jérusalem. Ses fils: Le Comte André Szeptycki, Métropolitain de Halicz, Archevêque de Léopol, Evêque de Kamieniec Podolski, Conseiller intime de S. M. A., Vice-maréchal de la diète de Galicie. Le Comte Alexandre Szeptycki et sa femme la Comtesse Isa Szeptycka, née de Junosza Sobańska, avec leur enfants MARIE, SOPHIE, THÉRÉSE, ROSE, HEDVIGE. Le Comte Stanislas Szeptycki, Chambellan de S.M.A., Capitaine de l’Etat major, attaché militaire au quartier général de l’armée russe en Extrême Orient, Chevalier de l’ordre R. de St. Georges de Bavière. Le Comte Léon Szeptycki et sa femme la Comtesse Hedvige Szeptycka née Comtesse de Słupów Szembek avec leur fille Sophie

ont la douleur de vois faire part de la perte qu’ils viennent de faire en la personne de leur épouse, mère, belle-mère et grand-mère.

LA COMTESSE

SOPHIE SZEPTYCKA

née Comtesse de Pleszowice Fredro,

Dame de l’ordre de la Croix étoilée de la Croix “Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice”

munie des Sacrements de l’Eglise, décédée à Przyłbice le 17 Avril 1904

à l’age de 66 ans.

La dépoille mortelle reposera dans les caveaux de famille à Przyłbice.

Przyłbice le 17. Avril, 1904.

Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky to Cardinal Girolamo Maria Gotti:

Sans mors matris etiamsi solatio christianae spei, et dulci memoria Ejus virtutum moderatum sacrificatum gravem tamen dolorem affert filio, qui post Deum matrem summo diligebat amore- Non sine lacrimos dolores cogito, quorum defuncta saepe ipse vel in eius fui causa Ejus patientiam et firmam fidem, cum tamen mors opino malum sit ab optimo Deo datum, cujus sanctissimam voluntatem amare venerari infantem me, ipsa docuit non nisi gratiae Deo hodie agendae sunt mihi ob omnia beneficia in defunctam- easque mediante in nos Ejus filios collata. [...] Leopoli die 21/V 904

Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and the Roman Curia

2010-03-06T11:55:00.000-08:00

Despite the deep reservations of his flock, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky greeted the election of Achille Ratti as Pope Pius XI with optimism and hope. The two churchmen’s paths had first crossed in 1918, with Ratti’s appointment as papal envoy to Poland, Russia and Ukraine. During that mission, Ratti’s ambivalence towards their independence struggle caused Ukrainian patriots to be wary of the new pope’s intentions. True to form, in his battle against nationalism, Pius XI demanded that his ministers place stringent limits on the nationally conscious Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. By analogy, during Pius XI’s pontificate, the Apostolic See’s relationship with the Ukrainian nation can be seen through the Roman Curia’s relations with Metropolitan Sheptytsky, the Ukrainian Catholic primate. [...]

Andrei Sheptytsky served as metropolitan under five popes, three secretaries of state, three prefects of the Propaganda for Oriental Affairs and another four of its successor the Oriental Congregation. His relationship with each Pope and with each dicastery differed according to the needs of his Church, the individual policies of each pontiff and those of his officials. Roman Curia’s ultimate verdict of Sheptytsky was undoubtedly positive. In particular, its oriental dicastery recognized his constant fidelity and zeal amidst persecutions and hindrances, declaring him a confessor of the Faith for the Union of the Orient with the Roman Apostolic See. While falling short of completely restoring the powers granted by Pius X, Pius XII entrusted the entire Catholic mission in the Soviet Union to Sheptytsky’s care. Following Kyr Andrei’s death, the same pontiff publicly manifested his esteem in two magisterial pronouncements. Although Sheptytsky’s beatification has been inordinately delayed, his name continues to appear in significant acts of the papal Magisterium into the third millennium.

(From the Conference Le governement pontificale sous Pie XI.)

The Mystery of Father Damascene Polivka

2010-01-20T01:26:00.000-08:00

Founder of the Ukrainian Church in Winnipeg

An article entitled Winnipeg’s First Ukrainian Catholic Church has recently appeared in The Winnipeg Free Press. The piece is a good summary of the beginnings of the mother of all Ukrainian religious congregations in the city. Nevertheless, it does contain a few factual errors. One of them pertains to the founder of the congregation, Father Damascene Polivka.

The figure of Damascene Polivka is shadowed in mystery. Concrete facts about his life history continue to evade us. I attempted to discover more about this mysterious missionary when assisting St. Nicholas Parish compose its centennial history book, but my quest was in vain. The principal difficulty was that key archival sources were not made available. Thus, when St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church Celebrating 100 Years. Together for Tomorrow went to press, it left several historical details undiscovered, including the history of the parish’s own founder.

What little was known about Polivka came from publications of lesser historical value. These contained precious few details about him, where he was mentioned at all. His origins, details of his mission, and even the spelling of his name were not uniformly reported. Photographs of him are extremely rare (I know of only a one). He has been described as a Ruthenian missionary priest but of Slovak origin, a Basilian monk sent to Canada by the archbishop of Lviv, Cardinal Sembratovych. Many details about his person and work appear to be contradictory, and equally mysterious seems to be his role in the foundation of a church congregation shortly before he left the city of Winnipeg one-hundred and ten years ago, never to return.

I have been able to resolve part of the the mystery surrounding Polivka, including details of his origins and mission, by consulting his personal file in the Archives of the former Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide for the Affairs of the Oriental Rite, now contained in the Archives of the Congregation of the Oriental Churches. The documents contained under the rubric Monaci reveal the following:

Our missionary was born Adalbert Francisk Polivka on 4 February 1869 in the Bohemian village of Hostin u Vojkovic. His father was of Hungarian-Slavic (Slovak) origins. At the time, Bohemia (Czech), northern Hungary (Slovakia) and Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine) were all part of a single state, the Habsburg empire of Austria-Hungary. Even in Cyrillic, he always signed his name Polivka (Полівка) and not the Ukraininized Polyvka or Polywka (Поливка) that appears in most publications.

In early life, Adalbert trained as a medical doctor and surgeon. He spent a few years in the Latin-Rite congregation of the Brothers of Mercy. In 1892, upon entering the Ruthenian Order of St. Basil the Great, he assumed the religious name John-Damascene or simply Damascene after the great Saint and Church Father. The young Polivka had been encouraged to join this order-in-reform by his eponymous fellow Bohemian, Jesuit Father Adalbert Baudiss. Baudiss was one of the protagonists of the Basilian reform and served as master of novices in Dobromyl, Galicia. He looked on the young surgeon as having been sent “by Divine Providence” to minister to the medical needs of the impoverished, fledgling religious community. But the Church law of the time did not allow the hands of priests, consecrated for the holy service of the altar, to be stained with blood, neither to fight in war, nor to practice surgery, nor even to hunt. Baudiss had to ask for a special dispensation from Propaganda Fide, which accorded his recruit permission to practice his medical arts but only within the monasteries.

In order to help the Basilian reform, Pope Leo XIII had granted the Order the right of receiving Latin-Rite candidates without any canonical dispensation. At their final profession, the pontiff decreed that these monks were automatically to be transferred to the Byzantine Rite. Polivka was one of several non-Ukrainians to make use of this privilege. He professed his final vows in 1896 and was ordained a priest on 12 September of the following year.

Although the Roman Pontiff had intended to favour the Basilians, the extraordinary privileges that he had conceded elicited fierce criticism from Ruthenian-Ukrainian society, which saw the Order as one of its few national institutions. It was feared the Jesuits would attempt to Polonize the Order and, through it, Ukrainian society. By seconding such criticisms, Metropolitan Josyf Sembratovych was forced to resign his see. Rome and Vienna thought that the Byzantine-Rite Ruthenians could not reform their church without outside help. And thus, in the first years of the Basilian reform, the Jesuits allowed the Basilian communities to become cosmopolitan, in typically Austro-Hungarian fashion.

As long as the Jesuits governed the Order, ethnic conflicts were kept at bay. However, nationalistic tensions were brewing within the empire. The Polish-Ukrainian truce (the New Era) had come to an end in 1895 and the Basilians began to take sides. The Jesuits had already begun to entrust the governance of individual monasteries to reformed Basilians but several young Ukrainian fathers felt this was not enough. They began to call for the Jesuits to relinquish the governance of their Order altogether. Seeing that they were unwanted, the Jesuits asked to be relieved but the Apostolic See would not permit them to abandon the reform until 1904. Father Baudiss was among those who believed that the young community was not yet ready to govern itself. Amid such tensions, those who appeared to take the Jesuits’ side began to experience discrimination from their confreres. Those who were not Ukrainian ethnics, like Damascene Polivka, began to feel out of place in a community which was becoming increasingly nationalistic.

In March 1899, Polivka wrote to Propaganda Fide explaining that the negative, divisive atmosphere in the monasteries had broken his spirit. He asked for permission to work outside the order for five or six years, perhaps as a missionary in Brazil. When Cardinal Ledóchowski, Propaganda’s prefect, consulted provincial superior Father Mycielski, the latter attempted to have Polivka dismissed from the Order. The Cardinal rejected the Jesuit’s proposal and on 15 April 1899 granted Polivka permission to work outside his community for three years, under the jurisdiction of his local bishop, Cardinal Sembratovych. A month later, on 16 April, Polivka had changed his mind about Brazil and asked instead for permission to become a missionary in Canada, informing the Congregation that he had written to the Canadian bishops. In June he obtained the blessing of the Ukrainian bishops of Galicia and the funds necessary for the journey. On 27 July, Bishop Legal of St. Albert, Alberta informed Cardinal Ledóchowski that he and his fellow bishops would be very happy to receive another Ukrainian priest, especially since the previous one, Paul Tymkevych, had become a renegade. The Congregation duly granted permission for the mission on 20 August. Just before leaving for Canada, Polivka wrote to Archbishop Langevin of St. Boniface asking for particulars about the mission and itemized the liturgical items that each Greek-Rite missionary needed to purchase.

There was some confusion on the part of the Canadian hierarchy as to what kind of missionary was being sent. Legal had written to Ledóchowski that he hoped a Basilian monk would do better where secular priests had failed. On the contrary, the Basilian Order had not yet accepted a mission to Canada and Polivka was being sent not under the auspices of the Order, but as a secular missionary under the authority of his eparchial bishop.

Damascene Polivka had been instructed to go to St. Albert, Alberta, but instead he remained in Winnipeg. Upon his arrival, on 21 October 1899, he immediately presented himself to the archbishop of St. Boniface who conferred jurisdiction upon him. Langevin then left for Montreal where he remained for four months. Polivka wrote to Propaganda Fide explaining that he had chosen to remain where the largest group of Ukrainians had settled, as it was impossible to serve in all three western Canadian dioceses. The Congregation did not appear to be satisfied with Polivka’s explanations as several question marks were penciled-in next to them in the margins of his letter.

In the meantime, the missionary was given liturgical hospitality at Holy Ghost Parish, administered by the Polish Oblate Fathers. Father Damascene insisted on the integral practice of the Byzantine Rite and soon caused a scandal by administering the Sacrament of Chrysmation (Confirmation) to Ukrainian infants. Since these had already been baptized by the Polish Oblates, the Latin faithful concluded that Polivka was re-baptizing them. The result was that Polivka was soon forbidden to celebrate Mass at Holy Ghost.

In the meantime, the Ukrainians had formed a committee. On 8 December they invited Polivka to attend a meeting at which they resolved to buy land for the construction of their own church. In what is probably the earliest Ukrainian church document in Winnipeg, Polivka redacted a petition in both old Ukrainian and Latin to Archbishop Langevin, asking him to bless the project. This undated petition (December 1899) was countersigned by 27 of the members of the church committee (as they appear on the document):

Андрей Зайло, Николай Маковецкі, Thеоdorus Stephanik, Прокоп Скіба, Wasyl Rudko, Ілько Бабій, Anton Czerkas. Jan Spizak, Alek. Książyk, Гриць Прокопишин, Julian Bohońko, Michał Lenczak, Стефан Волошиньский. Wasyl Tankowсky, Aleksa Roszko, Іван Сидор, Василій Турчинюк, Petro Krasiuk, Юрко Паніщак, Stefan Cinnyk, Jan Piskosz, Michal Doda, Юрко Кобітикъ, Nicholas Małachowski, Mikołaj Powawoznyk, Jełyjacz Kostiuk, Olexa Haluszczak, Michał Palamar, о. Дамаскин Полівка.

Under pressure from the committee, Father Damascene telegraphed the archbishop in Montreal, asking for his blessing. Langevin replied that the diocese was already heavily in debt, especially with the newly-constructed Holy Ghost Church which was to serve several nationalities. He further suggested that Polivka’s services were not needed in the city of Winnipeg but in rural Manitoba, where a larger number of the Ukrainians were without the services of any priest. In the end, Langevin ordered Polivka to assume the mission in Alberta for which he had been commissioned and for which Bishop Legal continued to plead.

Instead of going to Alberta, in the first days of the new century Polivka left Winnipeg for Chicago and thence to New York where he was reported to have come under the influence of the clergy responsible for Svoboda, a newspaper which staunchly opposed the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s jurisdiction over the Eastern-Rite Catholics. From the US and later from Montreal, Polivka wrote to his Winnipeg flock asking for donations and offering to return to serve them on two conditions: that they would support him financially and that they would not place the church property under the control of the Latin bishop.

Disappointed with his lack of cooperation, Langevin petitioned Propaganda to recall Polivka to Europe. At the same time, the prelate penned a courteous letter to Vasyl Rudko of the Ukrainian church committee, explaining the reasons for opposing their project. In this letter, the archbishop asked the Ukrainians to be patient and not to have any further contact with Polivka, whose jurisdiction he had withdrawn for disobedience. On 9 February 1900, Cardinal Ledóchowski wrote to Father Mycielski asking him to recall Polivka to the monastery but Mycielski replied that he would be a bad influence in the reformed communities. Mycielski nevertheless promised to ask the superior of the unreformed Basilians if he could assign Polivka to the empty monastery-parish of Krasnopuschna. Polivka, however, refused this proposal. He argued that his three-year leave had not yet expired and that his congregation in Plymouth, Pennsylvania would be in danger of falling into schism if he abandoned them.

In June 1900, Polivka wrote to Propaganda’s Prefect from Plymouth, explaining his side of what had happened in Winnipeg. He placed the blame on the Oblates who were worried about their church debt, and on the Ukrainian committee that had rebelled against the Roman Catholic authorities. On 3 May 1901, this time writing from Northampton, Pennsylvania, Polivka informed Cardinal Ledóchowski that he could not find a European bishop to accept him so he asked to remain in the United States. On 16 September 1903, Bishop Garvey of Altoona asked for Polivka to remain in his diocese and continue to minister at the Greek-Rite Church in Windbeer. The same day, Polivka petitioned Ledóchowski’s successor, Cardinal Gotti, to become a diocesan priest. Bishop Garvey confirmed that he was willing to accept Polivka as one of his priests in a letter to Cardinal Gotti dated 18 January 1904.

Previously, in December 1903, the Austro-Hungarian chargé d’affaires to the Holy See sent a curious document to Propaganda Fide. This document contained a list of Ruthenian Greek-Catholic priests residing in the USA that his government wanted to see recalled, undoubtedly for political reasons. The first name that appears on the list is “Damascene Polivka, parish priest in Windbeer, Pennsylvania”. Two other priests who had served in Winnipeg appear: Nestor Dymytriv in Northampton and Nicholas Strytynsky in Olyphant, Pennsylvania. These priests had one thing in common: they were all connected with Svoboda and had, at one time or another, functioned as independents, essentially Greek-Catholics who did not want to become Orthodox but who had difficulties with the local Latin hierarchy. Even though Polivka had agreed to serve at The First Slavish [Slavic] United St. Mary’s Greek-Rite Catholic Church in Windbeer, Bishop Garvey’s good dispositions towards him demonstrate that Father Damascene had never broken communion with the Catholic Church. In this, his explanation to Cardinal Ledóchowski rings true: “it was a rebellion not on my part but on the part of the people... It was rather the people, but not me!”

On 8 October 1905, Polivka sent a petition to Pope Pius X asking to return to the Latin Rite, giving the reason that the married clergy and fanatical (Ukrainian) nationalists were persecuting him. On 16 January 1906, Propaganda released Polivka from his monastic vows, transferring him to the diocesan clergy. On 29 February 1906, Bishop Garvey wrote to Cardinal Gotti that he had given permission to Polivka to return to his native Bohemia for health reasons. The last letter in the file was written by Polivka from Krpy-Vrutic, Bohemia on 13 March 1906 asking for the indult to return to the Latin Rite because he had no way of supporting himself financially and all his money had gone to medical cures. How ironic that a physician who had volunteered to heal and to alleviate the financial burden of a religious order was himself reduced to sickness and poverty.

After this letter, Polivka vanishes from history. Even the renowned collector of historical data, Father Dmytro Blažejovskyj, was not able to obtain accurate information about Polivka and his whereabouts. In his Ukrainian Catholic Clergy in Diaspora, Blažejovskyj erroneously listed Polivka as having been born in Subcarpathia instead of Bohemia, as having been stationed in Northampton from 1899 to 1900 and as having been in Galicia from 1901 to 1903. No mention was made of his service in Plymouth or Windbeer. The last accurate news we have of Polivka places him in Bohemia in March 1906, but what happened to him subsequently? After leaving the Basilians and returning to his native rite he no longer fell under the jurisdiction of Propaganda Fide for the Oriental Rites. Thus all further trace of him is lost in this Congregation’s archives. Did he remain in active ministry? Did he serve as a Latin-Rite priest in his native land? Where did he die and when? Hopefully further research will solve these mysteries.

Some of the mystery surrounding Polivka appears to be man-made. Perhaps embarrassed by the fact that Polivka had left their ranks and had fallen out with the Catholic bishops, Basilian chronologists have tended to play down, if not ignore, his role in the founding of their Winnipeg parish. Facts pertaining to him have been glossed-over, as in a passage by the late Dr. Modeste Gnesko reproduced in St. Nicholas’ centenntial history, which was taken from the 1966 booklet commemorating the opening of the present church. An English translation of the passage in question reads: “Residing far away from the Winnipeg congregation, he often wrote to it, encouraging it and supporting it spiritually and morally. In addition, he sent monetary offerings for the future church. Impressed by his advice and example, the people resolved to finish the work [that had been] initiated.” Vatican archival sources contradict this account, so the question arises: did Father Gnesko have access to primary sources which were not made available for the composition of the parish centennial history, or was this simply an well-meaning attempt to whitewash inconvenient facts?

Polivka’s unsuccessful mission made Archbishop Langevin swear that he would never accept another Greek-Catholic priest. However, following a meeting between his vicar general Father Lacombe and Metropolitan Sheptytsky, and the Vatican’s appointment of a Greek-Catholic apostolic visitor for Canada, the prelate was induced to change his mind. Propaganda Fide had been after the Basilians to assume the mission in the US and Canada since 1893, but the Order’s superiors had always refused. Finally, in 1902, three Basilian missionaries were sent to Alberta, and two more arrived in Winnipeg the following year.

And what about the church congregation that Polivka helped found? In 1901, two years after his departure from Winnipeg, a tiny chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas was constructed on property acquired by the committee. Historical sources demonstrate that the congregation identified itself as Greek-Catholic, even though they did not accept Archbishop Langevin’s jurisdiction. Despite this fact, clergy of various religious allegiances were permitted to use the chapel until the arrival of two Basilian Fathers in November 1903. At that time, the congregation asked the Basilians to assume the direction of their church. Archbishop Langevin paid for the construction of a larger temple (velyka tservka) which was opened in January 1905 and located directly across the street from the original chapel.

But not all segments of that single Ukrainian congregation agreed with the Basilians, nor did they like the fact that their church had been brought under the authority of the Latin archbishop. Consequently, part of the congregation left to found Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which was consecrated by future Russian Orthodox Patriarch St. Tikhon in 1905. Two years later, in 1907, a more nationalistic portion returned to the first tiny chapel (mala tserkva) and renamed it Sts. Vladimir and Olga, the future Ukrainian Catholic cathedral. Another part of the flock formed the Greek-Independent Church and in 1917, a further segment helped create the Ukrainian Greek-Orthodox Church of Canada.

The Basilians were far from alone in attempting to "remake" history. In 1936, Father Vasyl Kushnir, the parish priest of Sts. Vladimir and Olga, published a commemorative Almanach that contains a fictional account of the beginings of his parish. Orthodox publications went so far as to claim that the first church was not even Catholic or that the Uniates separated later. It seemed to have been important that each successor church lay exclusive claim to the first church, just as their brethren in Ukraine fought over Hagia Sophia in Kyiv. What is certain is that many if not all of the leaders of these churches were part of the original St. Nicholas congregation, co-founded and served by the mysterious missionary, the Bohemian-Slovak Greek-Catholic onetime Basilian Father Damascene Adalbert Francisk Polivka.

Abbé Quoëx and the Liturgy

2010-01-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

On 2 January 2007, a man of great virtue, Father Franck Marie Quoëx, passed to his eternal reward in God. Each year, those who had the great privilege of his friendship observe this day quietly, modestly but religiously. And so it is fitting, as Abbé Quoëx was a modest man, a hidden soul. His scholarly works, of great scientific value, are not yet known. And still, many who did not know him in life have come to admire him and cherish his memory. The power of his personality, the nobility of his character, the goodness of his heart continue to attract people who never met him.

An worthy reflection on Father Quoëx's life and work has recently appeared on New Liturgical Movement. To this excellent article, I can only add that, as an authentic Christian liturgist, Abbé Quoëx did not limit his interest to his own rite; he also studied in the Eastern Liturgies, especially the Byzantine Rite and its various usages. He would often attend Byzantine Divine liturgies in Rome and examined the parallels between different rites and their authentic differences. His scholarship was pure, motivated by the highest human and religious values, devoid of dependence on fashion or conformity based on self-interest. He cultivated knowledge because it is man's purpose; it belongs to his natural and spiritual destiny. Quoëx's liturgy, whether studied or celebrated, was a participation in God's Beauty and mankind's desire to share and live that beauty.

Father's Quoëx was not given the consolation to see his work recognized in this life. He was, however, granted the grace to see the accession of Pope Benedict XVI, who shares his love and appreciation of the liturgy's culture.

I encourage everyone to read the article in question in order to know him whose memory endures. May he continue to challenge and encourage us to follow in his footsteps.

The Title of "Excellency" for Bishops

2009-12-27T11:46:00.000-08:00

Throughout the ages, Catholic clergy have been styled by various titles. The most common title is Reverendus. In addition to the superlative degree thereof (Reverendissimus), clerical dignitaries also were styled with various secular titles such as Dominus (Lordship), Illustrissimus, and Amplitudinis (Grandeur). Into the twentieth century, bishops continued to be addressed as Most Reverend and Illustrious Lordship, while, in the English speaking world, archbishops were addressed, in the style of dukes, Your Grace. Cardinals were and are styled Eminence after the highest officials of the Byzantine court, and the Pope is called Sanctitas (Holiness) or Beatissimus Pater (Most Blessed or Holy Father).

The title of Excellency is secular in origin and began to be given to civil officials such as ambassadors in the eighteenth century. Thus apostolic nuncios (papal ambassadors) and other dignitaries of the papal court acquired the title Excellentia with the addition of Reverendissima to distinguish it from secular excellencies. Diocesan bishops began to acquire the title with greater frequency in the nineteenth century. For example, Metropolitan Sheptytsky, who held various state offices in the Austrian Imperial system, was addressed as Excellency inside Austria but as Illustrissimus ac Reverendissimus Dominus by the Roman Curia or Amplitudo Vestra/Votre Grandeur by other clergy.

With the fall of the continental empires at the end of the First World War, noble titles lost the universal legal force they once possessed and their use began to wane somewhat in civic circles. The ambassadorial title of Excellency began to be attributed to bishops with greater frequency. The solemn concordats concluded between the Apostolic See and new European regimes had force of law in both civil and ecclesiastical spheres, and granted state recognition to the Catholic Church and its structures. Thus, following the conclusion of the 1925 concordat with Poland, the Roman Curia began to address Polish bishops with the title of Excellency as opposed to Lordship. Throughout the British Empire, however, the ducal style of Grace for archbishops and Lordship for bishops was recognized in civil law for Anglican hierarchs, the lords spiritual, each of which was a parliamentary peer of the realm. The same titles were used out of courtesy for Catholic bishops of the Empire.

Following the conclusion of the Concordat with Italy and the Lateran Treaty, the Holy See gained international legal recognition. The Pope, as spiritual and temporal sovereign, was thus able to grant an internationally recognized legal title to all Catholic bishops throughout the world. In the audience given to the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Ceremonial on 11 December 1930, Pope Pius XI decreed that, henceforth, the title of Excellentia Reverendissima (Most Reverend Excellency) was to be used to style both Latin and Oriental patriarchs, apostolic nuncios, archbishops and bishops, and certain dignitaries of the Roman Curia. The decree enacting this decision was issued by the Prefect, Cardinal Gennaro Granito Pignatelli di Belmonte on 31 December 1930 and was subsequently published in the Osservatore Romano issue of 24 January and on page 22 of the 1931 Acta Apostolicae Sedis.

Immediately, the problem of the Eastern Catholic Patriarchs arose. As spiritual heads of their Churches they had been styled Beatitude in order to raise them above other metropolitans and bishops. Since the mainstream Catholic theology and canon law did not yet understand the concept of Particular Churches, many Roman curialists considered the title Beatitude to be abusive, and proper only to the Roman Pontiff because it had been addressed by St. Jerome to Pope St. Damasus in 384. Such was the tenure of the previous decree of the Ceremonial Dicastery (June 1893) and was the verdict of an article in the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.

It appears, however, that the Vatican Congregation for the Oriental Church(es) had not been consulted on the matter. Regarding the new title of Excellency, Monsignor Amletto Cicogniani, assessor of the Oriental, sent a formal thank you to Ceremonial on 22 January 1931. Nevertheless, only two months later, the dicastery’s head, Cardinal Luigi Sincero, brought the matter to the attention of the Pope in an audience of 14 March. He explained that the Cardinals of the Ceremonial Congregation had ignored the preparatory studies for the codification of Oriental Canon Law which had recommended that patriarchs retain a title distinct from bishops. Perhaps not wanting to provoke further conflicts in the other curial departments, the Pope ordered that, henceforth, the Oriental Congregation address Eastern Catholic patriarchs as Beatitude so that “in this way, this qualification would be introduced without issuing, for the moment, a special decree.”

In January 1938, papal secretary of state Cardinal Pacelli consulted the Oriental Congregation regarding letters to be sent to the Melchite Patriarch. The drafts in question had been addressed to “His Excellency”, at which Sincero’s successor, Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, remarked: “Why withold the title Beatitude for the Melchite Patriarch? Is it someone from the Secreteriat of State?” Pacelli, upon becoming Pope Pius XII, would correct this oversight definitively for with his motu proprio Cleri Sanctitati in 1957, he finally granted the title Beatitude to Eastern Catholic patriarchs by full force of the law (canon 273, 10).

The Episcopal Conference of 1932

2009-11-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

The Synod of the Hierarchy of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church is scheduled to begin next week. Before Pope John Paul II granted a synodal structure to our Church (in 1980), instead of synods the bishops held semi-annual episcopal conferences. What follows is a translation of the opening paragraph of the decree issued by the bishops at the close of such a conference, which took place in Rome from 9-15 November 1932:

“We the undersigned Ruthenian Bishops, congregated in this Alma Urbe [Mother Rome] express our utmost gratitude to the Supreme Pontiff for the kingly, nay magnificent Seminary building of St. Josaphat, the very building in which our Conference was held. Besides those present, His Excellency the Metropolitan of Halych, afflicted by a grave illness, was absent from our midst, and also our bishops from America and Canada were impeded and could not come to Rome nor take part in our Conference. Although absent, some bishops made their presence felt by telegraph and by sending delegates to the Holy Father, to the Sacred Congregation [of the Oriental Church] and also to the same Conference, for which they were deputized to cast their votes.”

The 1932 conference was significant, particularly for the drafting of a statute to be observed at all future conferences. Following its conclusion, the Oriental Congregation asked the Apostolic Nuncio in Warsaw to comment on the Ukrainian bishops’ resolutions. Writing to Cardinal Sincero on 22 December 1933, Nuncio Marmaggi observed that “the Conference was very occupied with matters of lesser importance, all the while leaving aside issues which should have merited the consideration of their Excellencies." The absence of Sheptytsky, their primate, might have been a factor in their inability to focus on more essential points.

Blessed of a Previous Pandemic

2009-11-03T08:32:00.000-08:00

" I lay sick for a month with a cough and rheumatism, at the time when influenza was spreading through Canada."

- Blessed Bishop Nykyta Budka to Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, Winnipeg, 22 November 1918.

The 1925 Concordat with Poland

2009-10-27T23:50:00.000-07:00

It is time to lay to rest the claim that the 1925 Concordat between Poland and the Holy See granted practical autonomy to the Greek-Catholic Church. This claim continues to be repeated by various authors. However, if we examine the historical evidence we discover that although the concordat granted legal status to the Greek-Catholic Church in interwar Poland, it also deprived it of several rights and freedoms.

Following the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, nation states in the nineteenth century delineated their rights and responsibilities by written constitutions. After the First World War, the Catholic Church negotiated written concordats with the new states, each of which also sought diplomatic recognition for itself. In this historical context, the Holy See considered the concordat arrangement to be the best way to secure the Church’s independence and to establish a working relationship with new regimes.

Several years of preparation went into the Concordat with Poland. The first soundings for this treaty came in July 1918 from the Regency Government of Austro-German-occupied Poland. However, negotiations had to be put on hold due to the fall of the Regency that November. Its successor regime, the Second Republic, appeared to be unstable so the Vatican waited to see if a durable government would emerge with which it could negotiate a lasting agreement.

The Holy See began negotiations with the Polish government in 1919 but ran into opposition from a group of Polish bishops (Teodorowicz, Sapieha, and Dalbor) which wanted to negotiate directly with the government. A compromise was reached whereby members of the Polish episcopate and religious superiors were appointed to negotiate a draft text with government representatives. The Polish parliament adopted a federal constitution on 21 March 1921, article 114 of which stated that “relations between the state and the Church will be fixed based on an agreement with the Holy See, which must be ratified by parliament”.

Historically, Poland is looked upon as a bastion of Catholicism but the government of the interwar Second Republic often pursued policies detrimental to the Catholic Church. Many of its politicians, who were ostensibly Catholics, had been educated in the liberal or Josephist ideologies of Austria and Germany. They made sure that Catholicism was not declared the official religion in the March Constitution, but merely the religion of the majority. They also sought to reproduce in the concordat, clauses favourable to the type of state interference that had existed during the previous imperial regimes. They were surprised that the Apostolic See was reluctant to give their ostensibly Catholic state the rights which had been previously accorded to the Lutheran kaiser and the Orthodox tsar.

It is interesting to examine the Greek-Catholics’ issues that were discussed in the concordat negotiations and how much initiative Vatican representatives took to ensure the protection of Greek-Catholic rights. The Russian regime had confiscated a large number of churches and large portions of revenue-producing lands, especially those belonging to Eastern Catholics. When he was nuncio in Poland, Pope Pius XI had appointed two Greek-Catholic representatives to a committee charged with drafting a proposal for the parceling of church properties. Perhaps the most intricate question, the land reform issue, took years to negotiate, further prolonged by the frequent changing of governments, each with its own views on the issue. Finally, in 1924, a draft concordat was agreed upon by church and state delegates in Poland, following which the government sent its envoy, Stanislas Grabski, to Rome to make the final negotiations with Monsignor Francesco Borgongini Duca of the Holy See.

Before the Vatican negotiations began, Francesco Marmaggi, the apostolic nuncio to Poland, sent the draft text to both Latin and Greek-Catholic bishops and major superiors, asking for their comments and concerns. The Ukrainian bishops expressed two principal concerns. The first pertained to government interference in church appointments. The bishops proposed that the church be freed of any interference in these matters, and that bishops be appointed directly by the Pope. The second concern related to the Eastern Catholic faithful residing in the Kholm, Pidlasia and Volyn regions. Eastern Catholic eparchies had been forcibly supressed in these regions by the Russian Empire, and the Polish regime had not permitted them to be restored, hoping that the Eastern faithful would thus come to adopt the Latin Rite.

Bishop Przezdziecki of Lutsk pointed out that the first draft of the constutition had not mentioned the Eastern Rites, except in the context of their obligations towards the state. He suggested that more emphasis be placed on the equality of all rites of the Catholic Church. Przezdziecki was also concerned that the Eastern Catholics in the former uniate eparchies not be deprived of any pastoral care, as the first draft of the concordat text seemed to imply by prohibiting Greek-Catholic bishops from exercising jurisdiction outside their eparchies. His solution was for the Latin bishops of those regions to coordinate the Eastern Rite missions outside of Galicia.

Marmaggi's report to the Vatican took into account this feedback from the episcopate, giving special concern to the Greek-Catholic issues. All of his suggestions were incorporated into the Vatican’s proposals during the first phase of negotiations. These took place at the Vatican over 17 sessions between 1 October and 5 November 1924. The Holy See was able to obtain concessions for Greek-Catholics but in some cases the government imposed restrictions. Let us look at some of the details in the Articles of the proposed Concordat. This will reveal where concessions by the Polish Government to the Greek Catholic Rites were sought, and where restrictions against the latter were still to continue in force.

Article 1 was changed to read: “The Catholic Church in all its rites will enjoy complete liberty”. Article 9 stipulated that diocesan boundaries had to be readjusted so that no bishop outside Poland had jurisdiction within the republic and that religious superiors had to be Polish citizens. Article 11, while stating in principal that episcopal appointments were the prerogative of the Holy See, nevertheless conceded a veto to the president of the Republic for any candidate considered politically dangerous to Poland’s interests. Article 12 enjoined that all bishops would swear before the President an oath of allegiance to the Republic. Although Article 13 required the use of the Polish language, Grabski promised that the government would also ensure education in the mother tongue for elementary schools. Article 14 protected Church property from state expropriation. Article 18 stated that Oriental Catholics outside their diocesan boundaries would be placed under the jurisdiction of Latin ordinaries, a restriction that brought some debate before being included. Article 19 stated that those dangerous to security be excluded from parochial benefices. A clause was added that, if the government did not present objections within a 30 day period, the church could proceed with parochial nominations. Article 20 mandated that conflicts between the government and the church over appointments had to be resolved within 3 months, after which the matter would go before a commission.. To article 22, on the use of the Polish language, the Holy See added the words “in the latin rite”, so as to avoid the government mixing into Greek-Catholic affairs.

The nuncio sent these negotiated wordings to certain bishops and clergy in Poland for comments. A second set of 8 sessions of negotiations began on 5 January and ended 2 February, 1925. During these sessions, changes to the text included the following: In Article 2, the Holy See insisted on emphasising the complete freedom for clerics to communicate with Rome and the freedom from government censure of episcopal letters (government officials had blocked Metropolitan Sheptytsky’s pastoral letter in 1923 and would do so again in 1938). The Holy See had been asking for the Peremysl Eparchy to be divided in two. In this regard, Grabski signed a secret note to article 9, promising that after parliamentary ratification of the concordat one Greek and one Latin diocese would be established in Galicia. (These promises were never fulfilled). A comment on article 12 stated that any further concessions for the Greek-Catholic bishops regarding the oath of allegiance to the republic could not be obtained. At the last session on 5 February, an agreement was reached on article 18 regarding Latin patronage appointments. Cardinal Dalbor’s proposal was accepted whereby the patron of the benefice or parish had to choose one of three candidates selected by the bishop. Despite flexibility towards the Latin Church, the Government refused to concede any liberty on this point to the Greek-Catholics.

Bishop Szelazek had been sent to Rome as a delegate of the Polish episcopate, to assist in the final negotiations. He wrote several letters to Nuncio Marmaggi, informing him of the final phases of the work. Szelazek stated that the last days of talks had been very difficult and he was in great fear of the outcome. He nevertheless believed that the Holy See had obtained all possible concessions from the government. While 2 February had been scheduled as the last session, Vatican representatives insisted on returning to the table, to further negotiate “grave issues”. Interestingly, at the very last minute (6 February), Nuncio Marmaggi asked Szelazek to lobby for the division of the Peremysl Eparchy and submitted information regarding state persecution of Ukrainian schoolteachers. These interventions did not enter into the discussion, which were concluded on 8 February. The final draft was signed by both parties on 10 February in the evening. Following a single-session examination by a commission of cardinals, Pope Pius XI promulgated the concordat on 18t February. As had been stipulated in the Polish Constitution, the agreement was put before parliament, which duly ratified it on 23 April 1925. The Concordat between the Holy See and Poland entered into effect as church and civil law on 3 August 1925.

Those authors who claim that the concordat granted autonomy to the Greek Catholic Church are likely following quasi-official publications which came out shortly after the ratification of the treaty. Monsignor Olexander Bachynsky was probably asked by Metropolitan Sheptytsky to publish an officially positive pamphlet entitled “Konkordat”. Bachynsky noted, among other things, that the state recognized the equality of all Catholics without distinction of rites, the state is not competent in Church affairs, and the Church had the right to govern its own internal affairs.

Despite such publications, the Ukrainian reaction to the concordat was not favourable. Even the nuncio noted that: “The Ruthenian Catholics are not satisfied with their situation resulting from the recent Concordat.” In July 1925, the head of the ZUNR in exile, Jevhen Petrushevych, wrote to the Holy See protesting the subjugation of the Ukrainians in Poland. Father Let Gillet also noted Ukrainian discontent in his journal entry of 26 August 1925.

The concordat had immediate repercussions for the Greek-Catholic Church. First, all the bishops had to swear an oath of loyalty to the Polish state and abandon any official support for a Ukrainian separatist movement. The liturgical prayers for the head of state in the Liturgy were modifed. In the first issue of his diocesan bulletin for 1926, Metropolitan Sheptytsky decreed: “In virtue of Article VIII of the Concordat of the Holy Apostolic See with the Republic of Poland and the decision of the Polish episcopate in Warsaw (1925), it is prescribed that, in future, on all Sundays and on 3 May, during the Holy Mass, after the dismissal during the prayer “ad multos annos” which begins with the words “through their holy prayers”, leaving aside the words: “to our most faithful emperor”, after the expression: “all of our fathers and brothers”, the following words must be said: “save, O Lord, our state and its president (N.N.)”, together with the words following to the end of the prayer. In all other places in the Liturgy, only the church authorities are to be commemorated.”

Perhaps the most disappointing feature of the concordat for the Greek-Catholic Church was the restriction of pastoral activities to the three eparchies of Galicia (renamed Little Poland). This meant that Bishop Josyf Botsian, who had been secretly consecrated in 1914, had to refrain from the public use of his title as bishop of Lutsk because it was not recognized by the concordat. Although there was no specific mention of this eparchy in the negotiations, it was clear that the government was unwilling to lift its moratorium on Greek-Catholic clergy ministering in the borderlands of Poland, fearing the people in such regions region would come to support Ukrainian nationalism.

The Ukrainian bishops had warned the Holy See that a concordat would likely be used against the Greek-Catholics by government officials because in Poland the laws were not applied equitably. This became more and more the case in the 1930’s as Poland’s ethnic minorities began to rebel and because, in the words of Bishop Szelazek, of the government’s “tendency towards totalitarianism”.

Except for a single school, Ukrainian-language elementary education was abolished at the beginning of the 1930s's. At the end of the decade, the Ministry of Religion began to refuse consent to the appointment of certain Greek-Catholic pastors and, without providing specific charges, ordered their removal from border zones. The Nuncio drew the attention of the ministry of foreign affairs to such arbitrary procedures, which were in violation of the concordat. In turn, the government complained that the Ukrainian clergy were openly violating the concordat’s loyalty clauses.

The veto for residential bishops began to be used against candidates who had disagreed with the regime over any issue. The military regime was opposed to the the Eastern-Rite missions in Poland. In 1934, the president vetoed the candidacy of Auxillary-Bishop Cieslaw Sokolowski for the vacant Sandomierz diocese, simply because his bishop had placed him in charge of the Byzantine-Rite in Podlachia. Nuncio Marmaggi informed the government that the Holy See could not even enter into a discussion regarding the existence of the Eastern-Catholics. When the nuncio suggested another candidate, Pius XI replied that abandoning a worthy candidate would "bring shame on the Holy See". Even after local Polish notables testified to the worthiness of Sokolowski, the foreign minister told the nuncio that questioning the president's reasons was an offense against the dignity of the head of state. After all negotiations failed, the Nuncio was instructed simply to inform the foreign minister of that the pope had appointed an interim apostolic administrator.

By 1937, the accord between the Vatican and Warsaw had become a burden to the ruling regime's anti-Catholic and totalitarian policies. The state moved to grant similar legal status to non-Catholic confessions which were heavily under state control. The concordat ceased to have any legal status with the German and Soviet invasions of 1939, following which the Holy See proceeded to appoint Polish bishops without the consent of any government. Perhaps the most significant was the appointment of Josyf Slipyj, secretly named archbishop-coadjutor to Metropolitan Sheptytsky in 1939. This elicited a protest from the government-in-exile when it was finally informed of the appointment, after the war. However, With the establishment of a communist republic in 1945, it was in the interest of both Church and State to declare the concordat as having been voided in 1940.

The Long-Awaited Complete Inventory of the Archives of the Nunciature of Vienna

2009-09-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

The long-awaited Inventory of the of the Archives of the Nunciature of Vienna has been published (Archivio della nunziatura apostolica in Vienna, Collectanea Archivi Vaticani 64, Archivio Segreto Vaticano 2008). Over ten years in the making, this publication by Vatican archivist Croatian Father Tomislav Mrknonjić, OFM Conv. represents a work of meticulous erudition in archival science. Many such inventories deal with only a portion of a given archive, whereas Mrknonjić’s work is a catalogue of the entire collection, from 1607 until 1939/1940, the current consultable limits of the archives sources of the Apostolic See.

Previous to the release of this work, scholars had to make do with partial guides, the most recent of which were available for consultation in the Sala Indici of the Vatican Archives. The last such inventory extended only to the late 1880’s. Research of the nunciature’s contents posterior of this period had to be performed by guesswork or with the help of guidelines by scholars who had consulted beyond the indexed segments. In 2006, a skeleton-preview of Mrknonjić’s inventory was made available internally, in anticipation of the definitive publication.

The eminent scholarship of Father Tomislav is manifested in many details of the present work. In it, a meticulous description of the contents of each archival box (numbered from 1 to 904) is given, together with the titles and dates of its contents according to the original classification given by the nunciature’s archivists. Internal divisions (fascicles) of each box are indicated and each document contained therein is individually listed by its folio number, together with a brief description of its contents. The publication’s volume (910 pages) testifies to dedication and perseverence of the editor who, over the last decade, dedicated his energies to researching the history and contents of an enormous quantity of primary source material.

Tomislav Mrknonjić also merits great praise for his care and precision in reproducing the nomenclature of the various personages and places mentioned in the fonds’ correspondence. Of particular mention is his faithful transcription of Slavic terms, which often are paid less heed by western scholars. He has been careful and diligent in checking the current usage of names and places, sometimes indicating several versions, especially when the current usage differs from forms found in the archival sources themselves (for example, L’viv/ Lemberg/ Lwów/ Lvov/ Leopoli(s) or Szeptycki/ Šeptyckyj). Unlike other recent publications of comparable calibre, the transcription of Ruthenian-Ukrainian names found in this work are virtually flawless.

The particular history of the Vienna nunciature, described in the introduction to this volume, sheds light on the singular importance of its archives for both secular and church historians. The papal envoy to the (Holy Roman) emperor became a permanent legation in the sixteenth century. With the the division of the Habsburg kingdoms following the abdication of Charles V, the Imperial Court settled in the city of Vienna as did the papal legation to the emperor. This embassy or nunciature remained in place through the vicissitudes of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, at times when others had to be closed down. For example, with the final partition of Poland, the nunciature of Warsaw closed in 1796 and its archives were conveyed to the Vatican. With the fall of the Habsburg empire, the Viennese nunciature (thenceforth accredited to the Austrian Republic) transferred portions of its historical archives to the Vatican, first in 1921 and then in 1938 with the closure of the nunciature following the Anschluß (annexation of Austria). The final portion of its archives were moved there sometime after 1940.

With the suppression of the nunciature of Warsaw at the end of the eighteenth century, the Viennese nuncio took on the role of unofficial papal liaison for those Catholic communities ruled over by the Russian Tsar and the Ottoman Sultan. Thus, the Viennese archives have come to form a key primary source for material relating to the history of Ukraine and Ukrainians, both in Austrian-Galicia (from 1772) and in Russian Ukraine. In consequence, the inventory of this nunciature will serve as an indispensable research tool, not only for researchers of Austro-German and Hungarian history, but also for that of all of central and eastern Europe.

The vicissitudes of the Greek-Catholic Church are well chronicled in this nunciature’s annals, whether in the nuncios’ reports to the Holy See, in the correspondence with the nunciature of the Greek-Catholic clergy and faithful, or in the Latin clergys’ and civil authorities’ observations concerning the Greek-Catholics. Various topics of interest include: information pertaining to the Eparchies of Lviv, Przemyśl, Stanislaviv, Lutsk, Chełm (Kholm); the negotiations and nomination processes of Greek-Catholic bishops and church dignitaries; the internal condition and reforms of the Basilian Order and its relations with the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Church hierarchy; the conflict over the attempted introduction of the Gregorian calendar in the Stanislaviv Eparchy; the attempts by the Hungarian Government to interfere with the nomination of the Greek-Catholic bishop for the United States; news about and relations with the nascent Ukrainian state; the return of Metropolitan Sheptytsky to Lviv (via Vienna) in 1923. There is also one fascile containing reports about the nascent Ukrainian Republic's atitude towards Catholicism.

In contrast to the significant number of researchers belonging to Slavic nations such as Poland and Romania, very few Ukrainian historians are consulting the Vatican Secret Archives. Unlike the the aforementioned countries, neither the Ukrainian government nor its academic institutions offer support for such research. The single notable scholar to make prolific use of the primary sources contained in the Vatican’s numerous collections was the late Basilian Father Athanasius Welykyj. Since his death, over twenty years ago, only a handful of Ukrainian historians have made any significant use of its fonds (foremost among these is John-Paul Himka). With the publication of Tomislav Mrknonjić’s inventory, Ukrainian scholars who come to the Vatican in future, will be encouraged to access the documents of the Vienna Nunciature, which can now be accomplished with infinitely greater ease.

EVOLUTIO: As if in contradiction to my dire but accurate observations, two Ukrainians made a brief consultation of the Vatican Archives, at the end of September. Their funding, however, continues to come from North America. If Ukraine wants to stand with the rest of the world, then it needs to step up to the plate. A great nation must give more than it takes.

A Witness of Faith - A Gift to Ukraine

2009-08-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Greek word martyrios means witness. According to a Christian understanding, martyrs and confessors are not witnesses to anything else except to Christian Faith, Hope and Love. Although Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky did not suffer immediate death at the hands of his persecutors (he came very close), he did indeed suffer physical torture inflicted by those who opposed Christ’s Love. Sheptytsky bore witness before all people of good will, among them non-Catholics and even non-Christians. Yet, his actions were the result of a deep faith in the unique Mediation of the Saviour of mankind and of His Body the Church.

In order to reach out to all people, the metropolitan attempted to proclaim Gospel values in words that all could understand. Many times he was successful but sometimes he failed, more due to the fact that his hearers were not listening or did not understand. Foremost, Kyr Andrei's duty was to his Ukrainian Catholic flock. He understood that virtue and vice are two sides of the same coin; that the Ukrainian People had been given the gift of national awakening but sometimes, instead of being used for good, this virtue turned into chauvinistic nationalism, the typical vice of the age.

One of Sheptytsky's greatest achievements was his progress with Ukrainian national leaders and cultural notables. His patient efforts were directed, not towards their goals, but to making Christ's Teaching the inspiration for their achievements. His challenge was to draw them away from nation-worship to the worship of the God who loves all mankind.

Metropolitan Andrei's intelligent, moderate and virtuous approach was often misunderstood by nationalists of all colours. After his death, Ukrainian nationalists turned him into a mythical hero even though, during his lifetime, they sometimes clashed with him when he spoke the truth about hatred and selfishness. His opponents made him into a mythical foe but it was his own people's exaggerations that did him the most harm.

Beatification and canonization are proclamations about Christian-Catholic values found in the lives of individuals. By these two processes the Church, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, presents a person as a contemporary model, and discerns their ability to intercede for us before God. Canonization is not the same as creating a sports hero, a community hero, a mythical hero, freedom fighter or political dissident (Robin Hood, Dovbush, Shevchenko). It is about speaking the highest Truth (Istyna) which the World cannot give and often does not understand.

Like every human being, even the saints, Sheptytsky made his share of mistakes. However, speaking as someone who has performed extensive research in the various archives of the Apostolic See, I can only say that my impression, from the relative primary sources, is that he was a man of great virtue, of holiness of life, and of ecclesial (and ecclesiastical) wisdom.

It is true that Andrei Sheptytsky’s beatification has been much delayed. This delay has prompted Ukrainians worldwide to ask questions about the state of the Sheptytsky cause, but are they asking the right questions? Sometimes, it appears the metropolitan's message has not been understood by the very people that are attempting to honor his memory.

In the past, the reasons for the delay appeared to be extrinsic. Today, some question whether those now involved with Sheptytsky’s cause are being careful and diligent in their historical research? What is the quality of the sources they are presenting and, more importantly, are they addressing objections sufficiently and convincingly? Have the historical problems raised many years ago been historically resolved and have they been resolved on the level of Faith and Church teaching? These questions are simply the standard ones asked in all beatifications ad canonizations.

Some have chosen to resort to lobbying. On 13 March 2008, the Lviv Gazette launched an initiative called “Send a letter to the Pope” in an effort to prompt the beatification of Metropolitan Andrei. During a press conference held six days later, the vice-rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Myroslav Marynovych, stated that his institution actively supports the Lviv Gazette’s initiative. He explained that such letters should be written “for one’s self, for one’s historical memory”. He also suggested that this petition represents not “a narrowly denominational act” but an ecumenical one, "the glorification of a person who belongs to Ukraine and the whole world." He also noted that that several Orthodox intellectuals were among the first to send such letters. Marynovych added that many of Sheptytsky's contemporaries, even non-Christians, regarded him as a living saint.

Few would argue with Marynovych’s sentiments which are praiseworthy in themselves. However, if we look a little below the surface, we quickly realize that the Lviv initiative and the university's explanations bypass the principle issues involved in beatification. In reality, the Supreme Authority of the Catholic Church does not beatify someone because of our subjective historical memories, nor for ecumenical reasons (at least the latter is a Christian value), nor for their philanthropic deeds. It is not enough that we consider Sheptytsky an earthly hero; the Apostolic See must also consider him a supernatural one.

Returning to the natural order, some of the reasons which the Lviv Gazette suggested to the Pope for beatifying the metropolitan include: that he founded Ukrainian national and cultural organizations and that he defended the Ukrainian nation from its enemies (that is, from fellow Polish and Russian Christians). In welcoming papal Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone to Lviv, on 24 May 2009, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi made the following declaration alluding to Sheptytsky’s beatification: "for Ukraine the creation of the state is very closely interlaced with the establishment of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and the activity of Metropolitan Andrei.”

Such statements and other facts suggest that segments of Ukrainian society could be leaning towards the very nation-worship that Sheptytsky spent his life to remedy. While wholeheartedly supporting every Ukrainian cultural and national aspiration, Kyr Andrei warned his people not to instrumentalize religion for secular motives or, worse still, attempt to use it as a weapon against others. Ukrainians today need to recognize that, just as in Sheptytsky's own lifetime, lobbying for him, when not rooted and grounded in Catholic Christian values, will do harm instead of good.

So what should be done to promote Sheptytsky’s beatification? Should we stop talking about his national and cultural activities? Certainly not, for continuing to examine his life and work from an historical perspective, organizing conferences, calling for articles and books, all these are all helpful to his cause. What is more urgent, however, is a miracle attributed to the Servant of God’s intervention. Instead of sending letters to the Pope about Sheptytsky's civic achievements, a prayer crusade should be launched. For without the required miracle, all of the signatures, petitions and even the historical analyses will be useless. Beatification is about God’s Grace touching our lives through the example and intercession of an individual, and Grace comes only through prayer. This is why Metropolitan Andrei’s glorification will only result from a consensus of prayer and of righteous deeds.

Let all Ukrainians, including churchmen, artists, intellectuals, professionals, civic leaders and politicians set an example by praying humbly before the Almighty Lord of Lords, and publicly before our people, promising to strive to acquire the virtues and moral integrity that correspond to the abundant cultural riches which God has bestowed upon our Nation spread accross the globe. Let us ask these things through the intercession of the great Servant of God Andrei Roman Aleksander Marya Sheptytsky, that the Lord would glorify his person so that we might follow his teaching.

A Prisoner for His People's Faith

2009-07-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky (1865-1944) was imprisoned no less than three times because of his defense of the Faith of his Ukrainian people. His personal background, spiritual journey, and persecution, closely parallel aspects of the history of the Ukrainian nation. Young Sheptytsky underwent his own process of national awakening, which resulted in his return to the Byzantine-Ruthenian Rite of his ancestors. Becoming Byzantine yet remaining Catholic placed him directly at odds with the political-religious ideologies of both the Russian Empire and the reborn Polish Republic, especially since he had assumed the mantle of spiritual leadership over the Galician Ukrainians. Kyr Andrei was deported to Siberia in 1914 as an obstacle to the Tsarist Empire’s plan to absorb the Ukrainian Greek-Catholics into the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1919, he was placed under house arrest, this time by Catholic Poland, and interned three years later by the same government when he attempted to return to Lviv. Based on correspondence found in the Vatican Archives, this article reveals hitherto unknown details of the metropolitan’s imprisonments. It also sheds light on the reasons why Sheptytsky was imprisoned so many times and chronicles the vigorous interventions of the Roman Apostolic See designed to defend the metropolitan and to secure his release and return to his archeparchy of Lviv.

This article may be found in the newly-published issue of Logos (vol. 50, 2009).

The First Ukrainian Catholic School in Winnipeg

2009-06-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

According to Recently Discovered Archival Sources

in Progress Ukrainian Catholic News, n. 15/2617 (23 August 2009). p. 7.

While doing research on Blessed Nykyta Budka, I discovered some interesting pieces of correspondence in the Vatican Archives pertaining to St. Nicholas Ukrainian Greek-Catholic School in Winnipeg, known today as Immaculate Heart of Mary School. The letters in question, English translations of which are produced in this brief history, contain hitherto unknown details relating to the construction of the first school.

At the time St. Nicholas School was founded in 1905, some fourteen years after the arrival of the first Ukrainian immigrants to Canada, there were already five thousand Ukrainians living in the city of Winnipeg. Sometimes referred to as Ruthenians or Galicians, our Ukrainian ancestors came from what was then Austrian Galicia, which is part of present-day Western Ukraine. Although virtually all of these immigrants belonged to the Greek-Catholic Church, without priests or churches of their own they were obliged, initially, to attend Immaculate Conception and later Holy Ghost Roman Catholic Church.

At first, the Roman Catholic clergy had attempted to integrate the Ukrainian settlers into the local Latin-Rite parishes. Observing, however, that their spiritual needs were not being met, the Latin bishops, led by Archbishop Adélard Langevin of St. Boniface, requested Ukrainian Greek-Catholic clergy be sent from Austrian Galicia. In 1899 an itinerant missionary, Father John-Damascene Polivka (of Bohemian-Slovak origin), had founded a religious community in Winnipeg named after St. Nicholas. In two years this fledgling congregation raised enough money to build a tiny chapel on land they had purchased. Unfortunately, the church had neither resident clergy nor religious instructors. Various Orthodox and Protestant missionaries offered worship and education, in an effort to entice the Greek-Catholics to join their congregations and to abandon their Catholic Faith.

Eventually, in 1902, three Basilian Fathers and four Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate arrived in Canada and settled in Beaver Lake, near the present-day town of Mundare, Alberta. On 10 May 1903, less than a year later (and two months after having preached a mission in Winnipeg), the mission superior, Father Platonid Filas, described their humble ambitions in a letter written to the papal delegate in Canada:

We are beginning to build a house for the religious sisters “Servants of the Blessed Virgin”, who, together with us, also came to Canada, in order to help us in this mission work, and also, if possible, to open one elementary school for the Ruthenian children.

Six months later, in November 1903, two more missionaries arrived, Fathers Matei Hura and Navkrati Kryzhanovsky. This time, they settled in Winnipeg, where Father Hura assumed the direction of the tiny St. Nicholas Church and began offering classes to the Ukrainian children. The founding of a formal school is usually dated to 1905 as its beginning was often assumed to have coincided with the arrival of the Sisters. Actually, Father Hura had already set up a makeshift school, as evidenced by letter of Archbishop Langevin to the apostolic delegate, dated 10 June 1905:

As to the children that are attending the Catholic schools, there are not more than 70 going to the free Catholic school of Saint Nicholas in Winnipeg and perhaps 25 to 30 going to Holy Ghost School in Winnipeg. [...] I myself went to Vienna, last summer 1904, in the hope of interesting the Austrian Government and the clergy of Galicia in our schools, and asking them to send us catholic teachers; they answered me that they did not have enough for the[eir own] country.

Nevertheless, help was imminent. Father Hura had already requested the Sisters Servants’ Galician superior send two sisters to serve at the Winnipeg mission. Only six days after the Latin archbishop had written the letter cited above, Sisters Athanasia Melnyk and Alexia Chykalo arrived at St. Nicholas Church and began teaching at the school.

Over the next year, the number of Ukrainian immigrants in Winnipeg continued to increase; so much so that, by December 1906, in a report to the Vatican, Archbishop Langevin listed St. Nicholas as his largest parish in the city of Winnipeg, with 700 families totaling “4000 souls”. This figure represented twenty-eight percent of the city’s total Catholic population. The present day St. Mary’s Cathedral was listed as his second largest Winnipeg parish, with 600 families totaling 3000 souls.

Published sources state that in the spring of 1906 classes were moved from a nearby hall to St. Nicholas Church basement. Three years later, the school had still not relocated to better premises, as Archbishop Langevin noted in a letter to the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val, dated 19 January 1909:

The Basilian Fathers of Saint Nicholas Church in Winnipeg take care of over six thousand Ruthenians. The archiepiscopal Corporation has built them a church and a priest’s house with money borrowed at 6 per cent from the bank, and this religious establishment is still burdened with a heavy debt. [...] Their parochial school of Saint Nicholas in Winnipeg is staffed by Ruthenian Nuns in the basement of the church, a most unfavorable place. This fact, together with the poverty of the people who cannot contribute to the free school, are the reasons why many children go to the Public Schools. [...] Consequently, it is urgent to build a parochial school for the Ruthenian children in Winnipeg.

This “urgent situation” was brought up at a meeting of the Ukrainian clergy, held at the archbishop’s palace (l’archevêché) on 4 January 1910. At that meeting, the decision was made to construct a school building for the Ukrainians, even though the archdiocese was already burdened with many debts. Published sources stated that the funds for St. Nicholas School came from the Catholic Extension Society of Toronto. While it is true that Archbishop Langevin asked the Society to support the Ukrainians, in fact the bulk of the funds came from an unknown benefactor. As if by providence, on 27 January 1910, only three weeks after the decision to build a school, Cardinal Merry del Val wrote to the Canadian apostolic delegate that:

A pious person made an offering to the Holy Father of ten-thousand lire in favour of the Ruthenians. Wherefore, I am sending to you, for this purpose, an enclosed cheque from the Credit Lyonnais.

Apostolic Delegate Donato Sbarretti informed Archbishop Langevin of the bequest, to which Langevin replied on 9 March:

Truly the Holy Father is very good to take an interest in our dear Ruthenians and the benefactor that gave to His Holiness these two thousand dollars is generous. [...] In Winnipeg, we must build a school for the Ruthenian children.

Ten days later, on 19 March, Langevin wrote in greater detail to Archbishop Sbarretti concerning his project:

Truly it is a great encouragement and this determines me to take on the project of constructing a school for the Ruthenian Parish in Winnipeg- since only 150 children come together under the direction of one or two Ruthenian sisters in the poorly lit basement of the church of St. Nicholas. There are more than two-hundred other children that are not at any school and about a hundred good to the schools constructed by the Presbyterians or to the public schools. It means constructing a school for 400 children with room for the sisters to lodge.

With the requisite funds at hand, construction of St. Nicholas School began on 2 July 1911 and the blessing and official opening took place on 22 October. Only ten years later, this apostolate had already produced abundant fruits throughout the country. Writing from Quebec City on 1 November 1921, Metropolitan Sheptytsky shared the following observations with Bishop Papadopoulos of the Oriental Congregation:

The Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate run 6 schools for young children. This Congregation of Sisters, which came from Galicia 18 years ago only 4 or 5 in number, has developed very well. They have [...] schools in Mundare, Winnipeg, Edmonton Yorkton, Ituna and Sifton. [...] Thanks to the annual collections that the Canadian bishops decided to make, for 10 years, in all the churches in Canada, and thanks to the help of the Basilian and Redemptorist Fathers and to the efforts of Bishop Budka, all the Sisters’ convents have large and beautiful schools. [Today] their number is close to 70.

The first of its kind, Saint Nicholas School continued to serve the Winnipeg Ukrainian Catholic community until 1962, when the present-day building was completed and the its name was changed to Immaculate Heart of Mary. In its centenary year of 2005, a planning project for a new school was initiated. Canadian Ukrainian Catholics are no longer burdened with the poverty that their ancestors endured, a century ago. Currently, our community is endowed with all of the human, financial, and spiritual resources required to maintain a Ukrainian Catholic school of the highest calibre. Our Faith leads us to Hope which moves us to Charity. Besides shedding light on interesting details from the past, this article can also provide material for reflection about our future.

Sylvester Sembratovych on the “The New Era”

2009-06-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

In His Own Words

Sylvester Sembratovych had been a candidate for Greek-Catholic archbishop-metropolitan of Lviv in 1869 but, the following year, his more experienced uncle Josyf was nominated to the post. Sylvester subsequently served as auxiliary bishop from 1879, as apostolic administrator from 1882, and finally suceeded as metropolitan-archbishop from 1885 until his death in 1898. He assumed the administration of the Ruthenian [Ukrainian] primatial see following the enforced resignation of his uncle Josyf Sembratovych, who had been judged by church and state to be too soft on Russophilism. During this period, the Catholic Church also felt itself under seige by liberal-anticlerical politicians throughout Western Europe. In this climate of heightened political and religious tension, nephew Sylvester was given the specific madate of tempering pro-Russian sympathies among the Greek-Catholic clergy and in Ruthenian society, as it was within his influence. For this purpose, he promoted a political program of détente between the two dominant nationalities in Austrian Galicia, the Poles and the Ruthenian-Ukrainians. Known as “The New Era”, the program received considerable initial support but was eventually rejected by the majority of the Ruthenian elite, who judged it to be a continuation of their age-old political subservience to the Poles. In hindsight (1923), Sembratovych’s successor, Andrei Sheptytsky, also criticized the New Era for having further alienated the Greek-Catholic Church from the Ruthenian secular leadership. Leaving aside political evaluations, nonetheless, it is historically noteworthy to examine Sembratovych’s motivations for promoting such a program, in his own words. I have recently discovered a reference to the inauguration of the New Era, in a letter written by Sylvester Sembratovych to Cardinal Simeoni, prefect of the Sacred Congregation De Propaganda Fide, the Vatican department then in charge of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Here is a translation of the relevant passage, which maintains the original captilization:

In our Parliament of the kingdom of Galicia, which is here in Leopolis, an event took place which is linked to the good of the Church and of our Ruthenian nation: that is, a program, to be followed in the future, was brought forward by the Ruthenians, which aims to resolve the difficulties that stood in the way of the friendly relations and the political development between the two nationalities in Galicia. The program was laid out thus: We Ruthenians form a nation distinct from the Poles and the Russians; 2o we faithfully retain the catholic faith and the greek-catholic rite; 3o we will remain faithful to the emperor and to the imperial Dynasty of Austria; on the foundation of these principles we intend to benefit from constitutional rights and thus to promote the development of the political, social and economic good of our nation – keeping ourselves in friendly relations with the polish nation. This program, already suggested by me and subsequently proposed in parliament by one of the Ruthenian deputies, professor of the Lviv gymnasium Romanchuk, I have made my own and strongly supported it in the same parliament, showing the highest interest in it. I would say that this program was favorably received both within parliament and outside, with the exception of those few persons from the opposition parties who are against religion and the catholic Church. Having made themselves known, they can now be more carefully evaded. Of late, this program has also been well received by the other three Ruthenian Bishops and generally by the clergy and the Ruthenian people. It was published together with an appeal to the entire Ruthenian nation to favour it and to embrace it as the only means to achieve real advantages for the same nation. The said appeal bears the signatures of all of us Bishops, of the head of the Ruthenian parliamentary Club, and of the president of the society of Ruthenian nationalists in Lviv. We decided to take this step because we believe that this is the right means not only for the good of the nation but also for holy Church.
Leopolis, 17 December 1890

The Questionnaire

2009-04-17T11:08:00.000-07:00

Objective Criteria for Choosing a Bishop

A recent post on someone else’s blog has enticed me to return to a topic which I have studying for the past five years: the nominations of Greek-Catholic bishops in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In researching these processes, I have had to examine the procedural differences that occurred in the selection of each candidate. Previous articles have outlined various stages and persons consulted in the nominations of Austro-Hungarian bishops. This post focuses on particular variations in the information requested about the candidates themselves based on two versions of a key document in the selection process: the questionnaire.
Particular issues have always been considered in the selection of each bishop, pertaining to a given time, place and situation. Nonetheless, one of the relatively static elements found all these processes was the official questionnaire, of which I have discovered two versions, both produced by the Sacred Consistorial Congregation (today called the Congregation of Bishops). The first questionnaire is undated but was certainly in use at the end of the nineteenth century. The second, published by the Vatican Polyglot Press in 1913, is the product of the reforms of the Roman Curia and of the selection process to posts of responsibility during the pontificate of St. Pius X.
The first questionnaire is entitled “Notiones ac quaestiones circa qualitates quae necessarie sunt in promovendis ad Episcopale munus ac dignitatem” or in translation, “Information and questions regarding the qualities that are necessary in promoting [someone] to the episcopal office and dignity.” The document contains fourteen short questions pertaining to the name, place of origin, age, family, health, studies, sacred orders received, ecclesiastical responsibilities exercised, the leadership and administrative as well as the the moral and personal qualities which he possessed. In at least one case, during a period of intense political unrest, the question “is he alien to political factions” was added to the list by hand. This first document is very general and perhaps was too concise, as is evident from the lack of revealing information that it gleaned about a particular churchman.
During the modernist crisis, which came to a head at the beginning the pontificate of Pius X, the Roman Curia sought more revealing information about those being proposed for positions of responsibility within the Church. With this intention, a new questionnaire was produced in 1913, bearing the heading: “Interrogationes de qualitatibus eligendi ad episcopatum” or “Questions regarding the qualities of one being chosen for the episcopacy”. The new version contains several innovations, one being the division of the questions into four headings, entitled “articles”. The first article is followed by seven questions regarding the personal information on the candidate. The second article, containing nine questions, pertained to the studies, sacred orders and ecclesiastical responsibilities which the candidate had exercised. The third had six questions on the prospective bishop’s moral qualities. And the fourth, with two questions, asked the recipient to provide a general opinion as to the worthiness of the candidate and if he would be capable of administering a diocese. With twenty-four in total, the new version contained ten more questions than its predecessor.
One of the most incisive aspects of the 1913 questionnaire consists in the addition of a preliminary question (number 1) which was placed before the first article. In the original Latin, this first question reads: “Utrum testis candidatum cognoscat, a quo tempore et quomodo. Signanter dicat utrum eidem aliquo consanguinitatis vel affinitatis gradu coniunctus sit; utrum cum ipso intima amicitia, an potius aversio aliqua obtineat”, or in translation: Whether the one giving testimony knows the candidate, how he knows him and for how long, expressly stating whether he is connected to him through any consanguinity or grade of relation through marriage; whether he has an intimate friendship with him or rather an aversion of any kind.
Such candid information was not previously required and is likely the fruit of difficulties encountered during previous interrogations. Saint Pius X, who approved the additions to this questionnaire, understood well that even the most worthy testimoniary labours under human weakness and could possess an unobjective view of the person he is asked to evaluate. He might even have a personal interest in seeing a candidate elevated to or blocked from a particular office. The 1913 version made it more difficult, in good conscience, for the one providing the information to push or to block a candidate for personal reasons.
Although produced by the Consistorial Congregation, the questionnaire was also used by the Oriental Congregation, which, after its creation in 1917, took over the responsability of processing the nominations of Eastern Catholic bishops.
Following the Second Vatican Council, changes in church legislation also necessitated modifications in the selection process of bishops. For example, whereas civil governments used to have a voice in such appointments (often through the royal prerogative of presentation), today prominent Catholic laypeople, acquainted with the nominee, are asked to provide an evaluation.
Episcopal questionnaires are confidential and those who receive them are bound to keep secret both the questions and their responses. For approximately seventy years, such documents continue to remain confidential until the Pope sanctions their release. Neither document cited above is any longer confidential nor in current usage. They are part of the series released in 1985 by Pope John Paul II, who permitted the consultation of documents of the pontificates of Pius X and Benedict XV (1903 to 1922) contained in the archives of the Apostolic See. In 2006, our happily reigning Pontiff extended this consultation to include the pontificate of Pius XI (1922 to 1939).
Today, questionnaires similar to those examined here are still utilized for each prospective episcopal candidate. Once the questionnaires have been completed, the candidates’ names are short-listed to three, a list known as a ternary or terna in Latin. Based on the information gleaned from all questionnaires, the ternary lists the candidates in order of most recommended to least recommended. After clearing the candidates with the papal Secretariat of State, the Vatican department in charge of the nomination (Congregation of Bishops for Latin dioceses, Propaganda Fide for mission territories, the Oriental Congregation for Eastern Catholics) presents to the Pope the name of the person whom it judges to be the most suitable candidate, together with the names of the other candidates. The Pope may confirm their judgment, choose one of the other two names from the ternary, or even appoint someone who is not on the list. Generally, however, the department’s recommendation prevails.
Present-day Ukrainian Greek-Catholic candidates are vetted at two levels: the level of the Patriarchia or office of the Major-Archiepiscopal Curia; and the level of the Apostolic See. Both levels send out their own distinctive questionnaires. The Permanent Synod, made up of the Major-Archbishop and four elected bishop, discusses the information contained in the received responses and then presents their findings to the general Synod of Ukrainian Bishops (or vice versa?). According to the system in force, bishops in the home territory (Ukraine) are directly elected by the Ukrainian Synod and confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff. In the diaspora, however, while the Synod still presents the ternary of candidates to the Apostolic See, it is the Oriental Congregation which examines the ternary and presents its findings to the Pope, who nominates the bishop. Such a distinction in the process arises from the fact that patriarchs/major-archbishops do not hold jurisdiction outside the home country, whereas the Supreme Pontiff enjoys universal jurisdiction worldwide.
Present-day questionnaires, whether Synodal or Vatican, remain under strict secrecy, currently making it impossible to compare them with previous versions. It would be interesting, however, to know whether or not they continue to require the testimoniary to disclose whether he harbors either sentiments of friendship or of enmity towards the prospective candidate.

In Memory of Father Adrian Ckuj 1970-2009

2009-02-23T06:29:00.000-08:00

IN·PIAM·MEMORIAM
REVERENDISSIMI·DOMINI
ADRIANI·CKVI
AETATIS·SVAE·ANNO·TRIGESIMONONO
IN·HAC·LACRIMARVM·VALLE
VITAE·FVNCTI
OPTIME·MERITI·SACERDOTIS
APOSTOLICAE·ROMANAE·SEDIS
VISITATIONIS·PRO·VCRAINIS
IN·ITALIA·DEGENTIBVS
CANCELLARIAE·REGENTIS
DICATVR

" [...] tueri tales viros deberet, nunc vero eo magis, quod tanta penuria est in omni vel honoris vel aetatis gradu, ut tam orba civitas [scil. Ecclesia] tales tutores complecti debeat."

"[...] it would be her duty to protect such men, but all the more at the present time, because so great is the dearth of such men in every official rank, and at every stage of life, that, in her destitution the State [read Church] should make the most of such guardians."

- M. Tulli Ciceronis, Epistularum ad Familiares, Liber III, XI, 3

The Last Appointment of a Bygone Age

2009-02-03T00:29:00.000-08:00

Blessed Josaphat Kotsylovsky’s Nomination as Bishop of Przemysl

The nomination of Father Josaphat Josyf Kotsylovsky as Greek-Catholic bishop of Przemysl (Peremyshl in Ukrainian) represented the last of a former age as it was the last in a series of historical events: the last of early-twentieth-century nominations of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic eparchs; the last nomination presented by the Habsburg emperor to the Holy See; the last Greek-Catholic nomination processed by the Vatican department De Propaganda Fide; the last appointment to the old eparchy of Przemysl; the last nomination where the ancient privileges of the Greek-Catholic primate were specifically mentioned (but not used); and, finally, the last for eighty years where a Basilian monk was named eparch in Ukrainian lands.

Josyf Kotsylovsky was born in 1876 in Pakosivka, in the Lemko region of what was then Austrian Galicia. He enjoyed a brief military career in the Austrian army, where he achieved officer’s rank. However, discerning a call to the priesthood, in 1901 he approached and was accepted as a seminarian, not for his native Przemysl eparchy, but by Bishop Hryhori Khomyshyn of the Stanislaviv eparchy. Given Kotsylovsky’s intelligence and social status (a former officer), Khomyshyn wanted to send him for superior training to the Pontifical Ruthenian College in Rome. Although the places reserved for Stanislaviv students had all been taken, Metropolitan Sheptytsky offered Kotsylovsky a scholarship which had been reserved for the seminarians of Sheptytsky’s own Lviv archeparchy. Kotsylovsky duly achieved a doctorate in philosophy in 1903 and one in Sacred Theology in 1907, following which he returned to Stanislaviv and was ordained to the priesthood on 6 October of that year.

Josyf Kotsylovsky had become a priest at a crossroads in history. At the turn of the twentieth century, the European governments were preparing for a war which resulted in political revolution throughout the continent, leading to the dissolution of continental empires, the fall of the European imperial dynasties, the creation of political and social discontent and the division of Europe into democratic and totalitarian blocs. Each of these momentous changes would be directly felt in the life of Kotsylovsky and the Ukrainian Church and Nation which he served.

Kotsylovsky’s nomination was the last of the early twentieth-century appointments of the three bishop-ordinaries (eparchs) of the Greek-Catholic eparchies of Lviv, Stanislaviv and Przemysl (Peremyshl). The first two dioceses had been filled in 1900 and 1904 respectively by Andrei Sheptytsky and Hryhori Khomyshyn. The last bishop from the previous century, Konstantyn Chekhovych of Przemysl, remained in office until the beginning of the First World War. In 1914, Russian forces invaded Austrian Galicia, occupying its capital city of Lviv and also the city of Przemysl. They immediately arrested Metropolitan Sheptytsky and exiled him to Siberian imprisonment, and Bishop Khomyshyn subsequently fled to Vienna. The only remaining Greek-Catholic bishop, the elderly Chekhovych, was mistreated by the Russian occupiers and died on 28 April 1915. From their exiles, Sheptytsky and Khomyshyn sought to have a resolute candidate appointed to head the Przemysl eparchy, especially out of fear that the Russians would take advantage of the vacancy by appointing their own candidate in a move designed to sever the union of the Ukrainian Church with Rome. Recent archival research now reveals that this was exactly what the Russian Empire intended to do.

The Roman Apostolic See shared the Ukrainian bishops’ desire for a quick appointment for Przemysl, but naming a Greek-Catholic bishops had become a complicated process. At the time, a maze of interested parties had to be heard before the matter could be decided: Officially, the appointment was negotiated between the Greek-Catholic Primate (the Lviv Metropolitan), the Austrian Emperor, and the Pope. The Metropolitan had the right of submitting a ternary of candidates, from which the Emperor had the privilege of presenting one to the Pope for him to nominate. In reality, the views of the apostolic nuncio, local Roman Catholic bishops, Vatican curial officials, Austrian government ministers, and even Ukrainian public opinion was to be considered. The process was complicated and cumbersome, which made it extremely difficult to find a single candidate who fulfilled the political and religious requirements of all parties. Despite its defects, this protocol resulted in the selection of three zealous bishops, each of whom would later give their lives for the Faith. Bishop Kotsylovsky’s was the last appointment resulting from this accord, which came to an end with the fall of the Habsburg Empire in November 1918. Following Kotsylovsky, no additional Ukrainian bishops could be named until the Holy See negotiated a replcament accord (concordat) with the new rulers of Galicia, the Second Polish Republic.

In fact, Josaphat Kotsylovsky was the last Ruthenian-Ukrainian presented by a Habsburg emperor to the Pope. Since the inception of his long reign in 1848, Franz Josef I had presented many Greek-Catholic bishops, the last two of which had been Metropolitan Sheptytsky and Bishop Khomyshyn. The selection process for the vacant see of Przemysl had actually began during Franz Josef’s reign but the old Emperor died on 21 November 1916 and the imperial parchment presenting Kotsylovsky was signed just six days later, by the new Emperor Karl. This would be the first as well as the last Greek-Catholic episcopal nomination made by the young kaiser, who himself had the unfortunate distinction of being the last emperor-king of Austria-Hungary.

Papal scrutiny of episcopal candidates was mediated through the Roman Curia, the bureaucratic arm of the Apostolic See, made up congregations which are essentially papal departments. From its founding by Pope Urban VIII in 1622, the Sacred Congregation De Propaganda Fide was responsible for processing the nominations for Roman Catholic bishops in mission territories and for all Eastern Catholic bishops. In 1862 Blessed Pius IX created a separate department for Eastern Catholic affairs within the framework of Propaganda Fide. Kotsylovsky’s was the last Ukrainian Greek-Catholic nomination to be processed through Propaganda because only four months later, on 1 May 1917, Pope Benedict XV abolished its Eastern Affairs department and created an entirely independent body to replace it, the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Church. From that time until the present day, all Ukrainian Greek-Catholic affairs, including episcopal nominations, are mediated through this office, subsequently renamed Congregation for the Oriental Churches following the Second Vatican Council.

Bishop Kotsylovsky was the last bishop of the old eparchy of Peremyshl, which dated back to the twelfth century. Together with the nearby Lviv diocese, Peremyshl had the distinction of being the last of two Ruthenian eparchies to enter into union with the Apostolic See of Rome. After the suppression of the Kholm eparchy by Russia, in 1874, Lviv and Peremyshl remained the last and only two Greek-Catholic eparchies remaining in existence, until the new eparchy of Stanislaviv was created in 1885. After the post-second-world-war shift in national boundaries, much of the eparchy’s original territory lay within the Ukrainian (Soviet) Republic whereas a smaller portion, including the city of Przemysl itself, remained inside the Polish border. The Peremyshl eparchy had been suppressed by the Soviet regime in 1946 but was resurrected in 1989 in a new form, extending over a very different territory. The diocese was reestablished for the Ukrainian Catholics in eastern Poland and subsequently has became the Ukrainian metropolitan see for that country.

Before 1990, Bishop Kotsylovsky was the last eparch in present-day Ukraine to be a member of the Basilian Order of St. Josaphat. From the time of the Union of Brest in 1596, until the beginning of Austrian Rule in 1772, only Basilian monks were eligible for episcopal office in the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Church. The Austrian regime favoured secular over religious clergy and, consequently, let the Basilian Order deteriorate while greatly improving the quality of the Ukrainian secular priesthood. Thenceforth, no Basilian held office until after the Order had undergone a thorough reform, which was begun by Papal decree in 1882. In 1899, Andrei Sheptytsky became the first Basilian to be nominated a bishop in over a century. The following year, when he was elevated to the metropolitan see of Lviv, Sheptytsky was to have been succeeded in Stanislaviv by his close collaborator and fellow Basilian Platonid Filas, who had been rejected as auxiliary bishop by the previous metropolitan. However, the secular clergy became alarmed that Rome was trying to restore the Basilian episcopal monopoly and, after much wrangling, a secular priest, Hryhori Khomyshyn, was selected. Subsequent to Father Filas assuming the headship of the reformed Basilians in 1904, a conflict arose between him and Sheptytsky. The divergence between both personalities and the differing outlooks of primate and provincial developed into a conflict between the Ukrainian hierarchy and the Order itself. Asa result, in 1912 Sheptytsky discouraged Filas’ candidacy as bishop for Canada. Until this day, an unwritten rule endures whereby Basilians are chosen to be bishops only for the Diaspora.

Actually, Josyf Kotsylovsky had began his ecclesiastical service as a secular priest and a protégé of Bishop Khomyshyn, who appointed him vice-rector of the Stanislaviv seminary shortly after his priestly ordination. However, Kotsylovsky too fell our of favour with his mentor and resigned the vicerectorship. After a period of soul searching, he decided to embrace the religious life. Entering the Basilian Order in 1911, after the customary noviciate trial period, he professed his first vows in 1913. If the First World War had not broken out the following August, it is unlikely that Kotsylovsky or any other Basilian would have become a bishop in the homeland.

Metropolitan Sheptytsky’s imprisonment made it difficult for him to exercise his right to present a ternary of candidates. From Kursk, Siberia, Sheptytsky wrote to the Pope suggesting several names (none of them Basilians), but, at the same time, he explicitly renounced his right to select the candidates, on that occasion. At the time, no one could predict if the metropolitan was going to be released or if he would survive his harsh captivity. It was even possible that Bishop Khomyshyn would be appointed to replace him in Lviv. In any case, as the only Greek-Catholic Bishop remaining, Khomyshyn was consulted on the replacement for Przemysl and the candidate that he again proposed (as in 1912 for Canada) was Basilian superior Filas. This time, in poor health and mindful of a possible veto by Sheptytsky, Filas was not willing to let his name stand for a fourth time. Nevertheless, while the Russian occupation of Galicia continued, Filas did accept a brief appointment as apostolic administrator for the Ukrainian Catholics scattered throughout Austria-Hungary. During this administration, he appointed his new recruit, Father Kotsylovsky, to be rector of an interim Ukrainian seminary located in Kromeriz, Moravia.

Platonid Filas might have thought that his refusal of the episcopacy would end any further talk of a candidate from his Order, but Bishop Khomyshyn had already been considering another Basilian as a second choice. After Father Kotsylovsky professed his solemn vows in the Order, in June 1916, Khomyshyn was free to present him as his new episcopal candidate. In spite of the bishop’s support, Filas, as Kotsylovsky’s superior, reacted very negatively to the candidacy. This reaction was partially the result of the provincial superior’s own negative experiences and was partially due to the fact that, as Khomyshyn’s candidate, Kotsylovsky might be rejected by Ukrainian nationalists, to whom Khomyshyn was at odds. Father Platonid was forced to relent when probed by the apostolic nuncio, who carefully scrutinized his objections, finding them to be lacking in substance. After the canonical process was completed and Kotsylovsky’s candidacy had already been approved by the Austrian government, Ukrainian parliamentarians did indeed send a communication to Rome, energetically protesting the candidacy. Calling themselves “The Ukrainian Pro-Senate”, these notables, led by future Western Ukrainian president Yevhen Petrushevych, had been brought up according to the Austrian political philosophy whereby the Church was looked upon as a temporal instrument of the state. They feared that Kotsylovsky, like his mentor Bishop Khomyshyn, would not be sympathetic towards their nationalistic designs. However, both Rome and Vienna were apprehensive about the effects of ethnic nationalism for the multi-national Catholic Habsburg Empire, and they chose to ignore the protests.

The nomination process for Peremyshl had been prolonged due to the difficulty of communications during the war. Austrian forces reoccupied the city of Przemysl on 3 June 1916, and the installation of a new Greek-Catholic bishop could now go ahead without hindrance. Metropolitan Sheptytsky, upon hearing of the appointment in his captivity, let it be known that he did not oppose Kotsylovsky, even though he had not been his first choice. The Holy See communicated their acceptance of the candidate allowing His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty to sign the waxed parchment, written in courtly Latin which, in translation, read:

MOST HOLY FATHER! By the greatly lamented death of Bishop Constantine Chekhovych, of pious memory, of Diocese of Przemysl of the greek rite, an episcopal see in Our Kingdom of Galicia, has been made vacant. Solicitous that the same see be provided with a suitable and worthy pastor, We intend to name as bishop of the very same Diocese the professed member of Order of St. Basil the Great JOSEPH KOTSYLOVSKY, a priest well educated in the sacred disciplines, who, due to his gifted soul and ingenious talents, has been commended to Us. Since the archbishop of Leopolis and metropolitan of the greek rite Andrei of the counts Sheptytsky, to whom the confirmation of the bishop of Przemysl of the greek rite pertains by law, until now has been held in captivity by the enemy host and is being prohibited from using his governing power, We believe that the provision of the mentioned episcopal see to be devolved to Your Holiness. Wherefore, We present the aforementioned JOSEPH KOTSYLOVSKY to Your Holiness for the said Diocese, imploring, with filial observance and reverent affection, that Your Holiness kindly accept this Our nomination and deign to institute the aforementioned in the episcopal see of Przemysl of the greek rite. We pray that Almighty God, protect and preserve Your Holiness and His Holy Church in all things. Given in Vienna on the twenty-eighth day of the month of November in the year of the repaired salvation one thousand nine hundred ten and six, in the first year of Our Reign. The obsequious son of Your Holiness Carolus.

The imperial presentation having been made, Pope Benedict XV nominated Kotsylovsky on 29 January 1917 and proclaimed the appointment publicly in the consistory meeting the following 22 March. That same month, Metropolitan Sheptytsky was released from his Russian captivity and bishop-elect Kotsylovsky, perhaps as a gesture of unity, asked Rome for permission to wait for the metropolitan to return to Lviv, so as to act as his principal consecrator. Permission was granted and Kotsylovsky was finally ordained bishop by Sheptytsky, assisted by Bishops Khomyshyn and Njariadi, on 23 September 1917, over two years after the see of Przemysl had become vacant.

The new eparch of Przemysl did not turn out to be the man that some churchmen and political ideologues had predicted. Despite having been critical of Sheptytsky in the past, after Kotsylovsky's episcopal ordination, the two men grew closer, for a time. The younger bishop energetically came to the defence of the older metropolitan, especially in 1923, during Sheptytsky’s arrest and internment at the hand of the Second Polish Republic. Bishop Kotsylovsky travelled to Vienna, Rome, Warsaw and finally Poznan (where the metropolitan was being held captive), in order to negotiate with the civil authorities and to inform church leaders. On 6 October 1923, it was Bishop Kotsylovsky who finally sent the much awaited telegram to both the papal Secretariat of State and the apostolic nunciature in Warsaw, informing them that: “METROPOLITAN ANDREI RETURNED HAPPILY LVIV – JOSAPHAT”. And contrary to the calculations of the Galician political idealogues, Kotsylovky became one of the Ukrainian nation’s greatest protectors, especially during the Polish-Ukrainian War and the subsequent occupation of Eastern Galicia. Like Sheptytsky, Kotsylovsky’s adament defense of his people’s rights was keenly felt in Warsaw political circles.

Although the three Ukrainian bishops each chose different ways to deal with the religious and political problems affecting their Church, the Apostolic See’s representatives repeatedly passed very positive evaluations of these “three most zealous shepherds” (Oriental Congregation to Nuncio Lauri, 13 September 1921). Writing to the Cardinal Secretary of State on 16 April 1923, the apostolic visitor to Eastern Galicia, Father Giovanni Genocchi, gave the following opinion of Sheptytsky, Khomyshyn and Josaphat Kotsylovsky: “Regarding the three Ruthenian Bishops, it is sufficient to say that the Holy See can firmly count on their Catholic Faith and on the goodness of their lives. Their personal defects are not greater than those found among us. In compensation, their piety is truly exemplary.”

Their piety and devotion to the Holy Apostolic See would serve them well as their Church and Nation was forced to endure martyrdom at the hands of Nazi and Communist regimes. Each bishop would give their lives for God’s People. Bishop Kotsylovsky was arrested by Soviet Forces on 26 June 1946 and deported to Kyiv where he died in a concentration camp on 17 November of the following year. He and Bishop Khomyshyn were both beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001, and three years later, Emperor Karl, who presented Kotsylovsky for nomination, was also raised to the altars. Let us turn to these men of a bygone age who are alive in Christ and continue to dwell among us spiritually, in the present. We ask their intercession so that the greatest among their number, Metropolitan Andrei Roman Sheptytsky, would join them in the list of those whom the Universal Church has publically proclaimed to be among the heavenly blessed, as examples and intercessors for mankind.

Sede Vacante

2009-01-03T12:10:00.000-08:00

Постави, Господи, законоположителя надъ ними, да разуміють іазыци, іако человіци суть (Псаломъ 99:20).

As we begin a new calendar year, English Catholics are awaiting news of the appointment of a new archbishop of Westminster, to replace Cardinal Murphy-O’Conner who has recently reached the retirement age. If precedent is anything to go by, the acceptance of the cardinal’s resignation should occur simultaneously with his successor's appointment. This efficient procedure ensures that the archdiocese is not left unnecessarily vacant, that is, without a shepherd to lead both the clergy and the faithful. As a rule, Latin dioceses are left vacant mostly as a result of the death or unexpected resignation of their bishops.

Despite the efficiency of most other appointments, there is a single diocese in the United Kingdom that has been vacant for three years. It happens to be the one Eastern Catholic diocese in that country, the Apostolic Exarchate for Ukrainian Catholics. The previous exarch did not die, nor did he resign: Bishop Paul Chomnycky, who served as the third Ukrainian exarch (missionary bishop) in the UK for four years, was transferred to the eparchy of Stamford, USA, on 3 January 2006.

Three years is considered an exceptionally long time to wait for a new bishop to be found. In the past century, a three-year vacancy in a Ukrainian diocese appears to be unprecedented. The single exception occurred in Stanislaviv from 1900 to 1904, after the Servant of God Andrei Sheptytsky had been promoted to the metropolitan see of Lviv. That particular delay occurred due to interference from two sides: firstly, from the Austrian government, who obstinately refused to provide the required funding; and secondly, from those clergy who were opposed to the main candidate. The leaders of both parties put their particular goals before the greater good of Christ’s Church and of its faithful. Nonetheless, even from a secular point of view, historians have judged their obstinacy as short-sighted and selfish. In the end, the Apostolic See found a way to navigate around the obstacles originating from the little concerns of men.

In our own day, such unusually long diocesan vacancies draw attention to themselves and undoubtedly are the result of difficulties in accepting a candidate. In addition, certain assignments might be considered to be difficult, resulting in the candidate himself eschewing the nomination. In point of fact, the exact reasons for this particular delay are not currently known. In the future, however, historians will closely scrutinize both the problems and the protagonists involved in prolonging this sede vacante and will render their historical judgment. Whatever issues are involved in this long-overdue appointment, British Ukrainian Catholics ardently await the naming of a worthy bishop to fulfill this apostolic charge.

EVOLUTIONES: On 14 January 2009, a new bishop was nominated, suprisingly, for an exarchate that already has a bishop. Father Svjatoslav Shevchuk, Rector of the Lviv Seminary and one of the brightest stars in the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, was named auxillary-bishop for the tiny Ukrainian community in Argentina.
Hearts lifted when, on June 2, church news agencies reported that Bishop Hlib Lonchyna a native American, had been appointed exarch for the United Kingdom. Later, however, it was clarified that Kyr Hlib had only been appointed apostolic administrator of an exarchate which officially remains vacant.

Reforms of the Basilian Order

2008-11-08T01:20:00.000-08:00

"When reform is dissociated from the hard work of repentance, and seeks salvation merely by changing others, by creating ever fresh forms, and by accommodation to the times, then despite many useful innovations it will be a caricature of itself. Such reform can touch only things of secondary importance in the Church. No wonder, then, that in the end it sees the Church itself as of secondary importance." (Josef Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Presentation to the Catholic Academy in Bavaria on the question of Church Renewal, 1971).

In the history of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, of all religious communities, the Basilian Order of St. Josaphat maintains the pride of place as the most significant religious and cultural contributor. Over the centuries, the Order has undergone several reforms which have changed its identity and mission. In this article, I will present an outline of these reforms together with a reflection as to their significance for the Basilians’ historical and contemporary mission within the Church.

Before addressing the subject of recent reforms of the Basilian Order, we should have an idea about what the term “reform” meant in the past and what it means today. Today, reform is understood to mean discarding what is old and no longer useful and adopting what is new and fresh. In modern philosophies, new is considered to be better than old, and change for the sake of change is considered a sign of life. In former times, change was perceived as a sign of decay, as it is in nature. The past was considered a model for the present and changes, improvements, indeed reforms, were meant to bring a thing back to a pristine form which, ideally, was supposed to be better. This is the etymological meaning of the word re-formatio itself, to bring a thing back to its original form, not to give it a new one. Even though the intention was to bring things back to a former state, in hindsight, we can say that change indeed did occur, old realities ceased and new ones came into being.

The idea of bringing things back to an original state was the mindset behind the first Basilian “reform”, if we can call it that. Byzantine Christian monasteries generally followed the Rules Saint Basil the Great (329-379) developed by Saint Theodore Studite (760-826). The name “Basilian” was first used by Latin Catholics as a generic name for Greek monks in Southern Italy. In the sixteenth century, monastic life in present day Ukraine and Belarus was undergoing a period of laxity and decline. Immediately following the Union of Brest, two monks of the Holy Trinity Monastery in Vilnius, Josyf Veliamyn Rutsky and St. Josaphat Kuntsevych, intended to bring what they understood as an already existing “Basilian Order” back to its pristine state. In a formal sense, no such unified religious order existed. Monasteries that followed the Basilian or Basilian-Studite rules were independent of one another and fell under the jurisdiction of the local bishop. Rutsky and Josaphat’s 1617 reform actually created a new religious order along the lines of the semi-monastics of the west (the mendicants), such as the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Carmelites.

Taking its name from its first Vilnius monastery, the new Congregation of the Holy Trinity of the Order of St. Basil the Great spread and flourished across modern day Belarus and Ukraine and played a key role in the education both of laity and clergy helping preserve the distinctiveness of the Ruthenian-Ukrainian culture. Being the only religious order in the Kyivan Church, all Ruthenian bishops were chosen from among its ranks. The Basilian order was considered to be the backbone of the Uniate Church but it was virtually suppressed by outside political interference, after Russia and Austria partitioned Ukrainian lands at the end of the eighteenth century.

If we count the 1617 foundation as a reform, then the second major reform would be that of Dobromyl, began in 1882 (although several smaller reforms had taken place in the 18th and 19th centuries). We might call this the first recent Basilian reform, one that had direct consequences for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in the homeland and abroad. Austrian state interference in Church affairs, known as Josephism, proved beneficial in revitalizing the Greek-Catholic Church as a whole, but also led to the decay of monastic communities such as the Basilians. By the 1870’s, both government and Church officials had become alarmed at the growing influence of Russophilism in Ruthenian society, but it was the liquidation of the Kholm Eparchy by the Russian Empire, in 1874, that proved to be the catalyst that sparked the reform. Polish Jesuits from Austrian Galicia were secretly sent into the Kholm region to assess the situation. As a result and as a remedy to the Kholm situation, Jesuit superior Father Henryk Jackowski devised a plan to reform and revitalize the Basilian Order, virtually re-organizing it from its foundations. The Basilian provincial superior (protohegumen) Klymenti Sarnytsky sent a letter to Rome, asking for the Jesuits to enact this reform, and Pope Leo XIII confirmed the request with his apostolic letter Singulare Praesidium of 12 May 1882. Named after the site of the first reformed monastery, the Dobromyl Reform lasted until 1904, when the governance of the Order was given over to the newly reformed Basilians.

The Dobromyl reform had been designed to strengthen the Greek-Catholic Church for two main reasons: as a defense against the Russophile movement (political and religious) and to prepare dedicated celibate missionaries for work among the Orthodox populations, especially in the Russian Empire. As its mission was intended to go above and beyond Galician concerns, the Pope exempted the Order from the jurisdiction of the local bishops and substantially released the Basilians from a sedentary monastic schedule. The latter shift originated during of the Jesuits' drafting of the post-reform constitutions. The change was tolerated despite warnings by Vatican experts who foresaw that too many exceptions would endanger the order's original monastic identity.

Contrary to initial Ukrainian apprehensions, the reformed Basilians became staunch allies of the national movement. Perhaps Dobromyl’s most notable consequence was the formation of zealous missionaries and leaders for Greek-Catholic communities in the homeland and the Diaspora; among these were the great figures of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, Blessed Bishop Josaphat Kotsylovsky, Blessed Bishop Pavel Gojdych and other priest-martyrs and confessors of the Faith. Another positive consequence was that their semi-monastic regimen made the Basilians ideal for working among the Ukrainian peasants and in Ukrainian national and scholarly fields. This reform has been described by the prominent historian John-Paul Himka as “the most far-reaching response to the national movement from a Christian perspective.”

The Dobromyl Reform needs to be judged historically and by what it intended to accomplish. It did not intend nor could it resolve all of the needs of the Greek-Catholic Church nor the needs of religious life. It met a particular need of a particular situation during a particular historical period. Despite the fact that it was the only male religious congregation in the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Church, and a small fledgling one at that, the reformed Basilian Order was able to establish missions among the Ukrainian immigrants in Brazil (1897), Canada (1902) and other parts of Europe. In order to improve the quality and discipline of the secular clergy, promote celibacy and combat Russophile tendencies, the Ukrainian Bishops turned over to the Order’s direction the Greek-Catholic major seminaries in Rome (1904), Stanislaviv (1906), the wartime seminary of Kroměříž in Moravia (1915), and Lviv (1920).

The reformed Basilians were essentially instruments of Leo XIII's unionistic policy, which promoted respect for and return to the traditions of the Christian East in order to bring the Orthodox into communion with Rome. This policy was generally in force until the 1940's. Dobromyl did not intend to revive traditional oriental monasticism, something which one of the reformed Basilians, Metropolitan Sheptytsky, would address in creating the Studite communities. Indeed, Sheptytsky’s ever-deepening appreciation of his Church’s oriental heritage brought him into conflict with his fellow bishops and with the Basilians, who agreed with the generally-held hybrid model which Cyrille Korolevskij referred to as “liturgical uniatism”.

The character which the Dobromyl Reform had imprinted upon the thoroughly revamped Basilian communities can be said to have lasted, more or less intact, until the Second Vatican Council and beyond. However, imperceptible changes were taking place that would lead to a third (albeit minor) reform in the 1950's. Dobromyl achieved a major shift in attitude or in emphasis from an identity based on community to one based on mission. At first, this was hardly perceptible because the reformed constitutions were implemented in the large, older Basilian monasteries in Galicia. The missionary and other active work of individual members of the community did not affect the day-to-day monastic regimen, although the full Divine Office was only maintained in the novitiate monastery. However, a shift had occurred and the mindset had changed. The Order began to establish a large number of small mission-like communities that made even a semi-monastic regimen difficult if not impossible. Although their roots were monastic, in practice, the Basilians began move towards a lifestyle closer to that of the purely active congregations (like their mentors, the Jesuits) and away from that of the semi-monastic mendicants. With the liquidation of its original foundations in the Communist-bloc countries, the model for the Order's future essentially became the tiny missionary communities of the Diaspora, which were almost entirely orientated around parish apostolates.

The third reform codified this shift-in-emphasis into a new set of constitutions approved by the Apostolic See in 1955. These constitutions took into account both changes in Church legislation and in the growth of the Order. For instance, according to new requirements of the 1950’s, the profession of temporary vows for a minimum of three years was introduced before one was eligible to profess solemn, permanent vows. Also, since 1932, the Order had a new name, the Basilian Order of St. Josaphat, and had been divided into several provinces headed by a General Curia in Rome. The new constitutions gave the ancient title of protoarchimandrite to the superior general, a title that had been abolished by the Russian Tsar in 1804. Despite the return to nomenclature of an earlier period, a further shift in mindset-identity is apparent in the 1955 constitutions. For example, the term monasterium, used in the former constitutions to designate large, established communities, was changed to domus, as in the Jesuit Constitutions. Similarly, smaller outposts followed the Jesuit designation of residentia. According to the canonical classifications of the time, the Basilians fell under the heading of clerices regulares, a very general term meaning clerics (priests) who followed a religious rule. One could say that, at least from the 1950's, the clerices component was emphasized over the regulares one. Basilians were trained to be monks during their initial formation but, once they left the novitiate, they spent much of their mission engaged in the work of secular priests. Another example of a change in mindset revealed in terminology may be found in the fact that, in Basilian Diaspora parishes, the monastery is often referred to as a rectory, the term for residences of eparchial priests.

The Constitutions of 1955 were the last to have been formally approved by the Apostolic See. Not ten years later, the decrees of the Second Vatican Council necessitated another major reform. Each member of the Order received questionnaires and, based on the feedback received, an extraordinary Basilian General Chapter, held in 1969, issued experimental constitutions. With minor modifications in 1977, 1993 and 2002, these same constitutions basically have remained in force until today. Following along the lines of Latin religious Orders, the post-Vatican II reforms saw a significant change in the external formalities and obligations of religious life: external penances and the obligation to wear religious garb were relaxed. Despite the visible differences, the changes in the constitutions can be said to have been essentially cosmetic. As with the 1882 reforms, the most significant change after Vatican II was one of attitude. Immediately after the Council, Protoarchimandrite Athanasius Welykyj, especially through his annual letters to the whole order, inaugurated a new spiritual attitude of dialogue as opposed to blind obedience. An emphasis was placed upon personal responsibility, as opposed to external controls. Welykyj's wide, spiritual vision, however, was not always understood nor accepted by the local superiors, and his spiritual and scholarly inheritance remains largely unclaimed by the Order.

The principal task given to each religious community, by the Second Vatican Council’s decree Perfectae Caritatis, was to search for and to return to the charism of its founder. Essentially, the Council was asking for religious to more carefully define their identity and base their mission on it. This seemingly straightforward task was not so simple for the Basilians, as they had undergone several reforms and major shifts in identity. Postconciliar soul-searching revealed some cracks in the reality of the Order, which reflected unrefined seams still present from past reforms. Even the question of their founder’s identity proved to be difficult to answer: should the Basilians look for their original charism in the monastic communities of St. Basil, whose rules continued to be their spiritual guide? Were their origins not with the mendicant-style Order founded by Rutsky and St. Josaphat? Or should they retain the missionary and very clerical character imprinted on them by the late-nineteenth-century Jesuit reform?

The post-Vatican II Basilian constitutions also reflected the changed attitude of the Order’s superiors regarding liturgical matters. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Ukrainian hierarchy and clergy were divided down-the-middle as to whether or not the latinizations which had crept into their worship should be purged. The Basilians had generally opposed such reforms until a conflict occurred over the de-latinized liturgical books issued by the Apostolic See, beginning in 1940. This conflict resulted in the removal of the Order's interim vicar general and the suspension of priests who refused to use the new Roman editions. As a consequence, all post-1955 constitutions included stipulations for superiors to be diligent that only the approved liturgical books are used, although resistance has continued even until the present, particularly in the order of celebration for the Sacraments of Baptism and Matrimony.

The post-1969 constitutions were experimental, in order to allow Basilian communities throughout the world to put them to the test. After twenty-five years, the Order should have presented a definitive edition for approval to the Apostolic See. However, two key contemporary events prevented this from happening. In 1990, Pope John Paul II promulgated the Code of Canons for the Oriental Catholic Churches and, the same year, the Order was resurrected in Eastern Europe. The fall of communism allowed the underground Basilian communities to re-emerge and for the Order to re-establish its European provinces. These re-activated provinces, together with Ukraine, now held the majority of the Order's members but they had not lived through the turbulent experimental post-conciliar years. The period of experimentation had to be prolonged another ten years, in order that the European communities could integrate their experience of community life into the Basilian rules, and that these rules be made to conform to the stipulations of the new Oriental Code.

By far, the most significant change in the Basilian constitutions since 1969 has been the change in the selection process of their superiors. The Basilian electoral system was based on the highly centralized Jesuit model whereby all offices were appointed from above, rather than elected from below. A notable exception was the choice of the first reformed Basilian provincial, Father Platonid Filas, in 1904, who was selected by popular vote. Nevertheless, from the 1896 constitutions through to 1931, minor superiors were appointed by the Galician provincial superior (who acted as general superior) and his curia. These superiors automatically became members of the electoral chapters. This meant that that the collective membership of the Order had little say in the selection of their superiors, a fact which gave rise to concern among the Ukrainian Church hierarchy at the turn of the twentieth century. Metropolitan Sheptytsky drew attention to the fact that that a small group, made up of the major superior and his appointees, who numerically dominated each electoral chapter, had become a self-perpetuating ruling caste. As a result, Sheptytsky suggested that the electoral system be reformed in a way that would grant more authority to the members of the Order at large.

Little was done to reform this system until 1931, when the Order was divided into seperate provinces and the power to appoint minor superiors was given to the individual provincial superiors. After Vatican II, an indicative vote was introduced, granting consultation rights to the general membership of each province as pertaining to the selection of their provincial superiors. Nevertheless, the provincial chapters (made up largely of unelected Fathers) continued to select candidates without being bound to heed the indicative voice. These chapters then presented a ternary of candidates to the General Curia, which retained the power to appoint the Provincial superior and his counsellors. At the general chapter of 1996, a compromise formula was agreed upon in which the provincial chapters received the power to directly elect their curias, although those elected still require confirmation by the general curia. This current system gives more power to the largely unelected provincial chapters, but still fails to give adequate heed to the voice of the membership at large, as Sheptytsky had proposed. As an order of pontifical (that is papal) rite, however, the election of the general superior and his curia continues to require confirmation by the Apostolic See.

Basilian General Chapters of 2000, 2004, 2006 and 2008 have all struggled to agree on a definitive version of the constitutions to present for approval to the Apostolic See. Consistent with the norms and guidelines in place for such documents, the new constitutions are made-up of a permanent, general section for the whole order (called the pravyla or constitution) and a more specific section that can be amended from time to time called the pravylnyk or directory. This distinction had already been introduced in the earlier experimental constitutions. A novelty, which is to be introduced, is that each province will have its own directory, adapted to the local culture. Also, the new constitutions will be less wordy and rhetorical than previous versions.

The process of producing a definitive text revealed diverging tendencies within the Order as to which of its past reforms should be taken as the basis for its present identity and charism. Even the term and concept of charism was hotly debated, revealing that even the more educated among the chapter Fathers could be out of touch with contemporary Church Magisterium concerning religious life. In addition, a cultural, geographical and even an age divide was revealed in the Order: the older North and South American delegates being generally orientated to the Dobromyl/mission model while the younger European Fathers looked back to the Order's foundation of Rutsky-Josaphat as the basis for their identity.

Another point of debate was over the Basilian’s traditional five vows. In addition to the standard vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, post-1882 constitutions had added the Jesuit vows, one of obedience and submission to the Roman Pontiff and another not to aspire to higher offices or honours. The experimental constitutions of 1969 had reworded the vow to the Pope into a promise and discarded the vow to shun honours, although the latter was re-inserted in the 1993 text. Despite pressure based on spurious theological and canonical arguments, the General Chapter of 2004 voted to retain the oath of obedience to the Roman Pontiff in the original form of a vow, as in the last approved constitutions of 1955. Unfortunately, subsequent chapters have allowed it to be “linguistically rendered-away” into a promise.

One matter that appears to have been left untreated in the reforms of the Basilian rules is the question of the Order’s parishes. Before the First World War, with the rarest exceptions, Basilian churches did not enjoy the status of parishes. At first, in Diaspora mission territories, the Basilian mission acted as surrogate to eparchial structures. Later, due to jurisdictional and legal conflicts, the Order negotiated contracts with individual dioceses whereby their principal churches were given to the Order’s care in spiritualibus et in temporalibus, according to the canonical nomenclature of the time. This meant that the spiritual mission as well as the church property and all revenues (including collections) fell under the jurisdiction and ownership of the Order alone. The Second Vatican Council gave greater emphasis to the universal mission of the diocesan bishop and did away with the temporal-spiritual jurisdiction of religious orders in matters pertaining to the faithful. Therefore, all contracts negotiated with the Basilians lack their former canonical vigor, and yet, hitherto, neither the Basilian superiors nor the eparchial bishops have taken the initiative to renegotiate such agreements in the light of current Church law.

Another difficult question that remains unresolved concerns that of the Basilian‘s material assets and their relation to their own mission and to that of the Church. Over the centuries, through the bequests of benefactors and through a frugal and laborious life of communal religious poverty, the Order amassed large landholdings both in the Europe and in the New World. In the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, these properties and questions connected with them led to conflicts with the church hierarchy and to internal difficulties in the congregation itself. For instance, not ten years after the completion of the austere Dobromyl Reform, Metropolitan Shepytsky and his suffragens (two of them were themselves Basilians) had noticed that the Order’s superiors were already being appointed for their administrative skills and financial savvy rather than according to the spiritual and human qualities neccessary to be genuine religious leaders. They opined that the Basilians were spending too much time on oiling their worldly machinery, which distracted them from their Order’s rightful purpose and induced them to look after their own interests at the expense of those of the Church. The bishops further lamented that although Pope Leo XIII had decreed the Basilians were supposed to help the hierarchy, instead, the Order had become a competing parallel structure; in their words, “a church within a church”.

Returning to the latest Basilian reforms: based once again on feedback from the worldwide membership of the Order, the 2000 general chapter established a commission to produce a draft project of the definitive constitutions. This project was presented, voted upon, and modified by the 2004 general chapter, but later was rejected by the canonical commission which that chapter had created. The project commission had made the error of failing to take the last constitutions to have been approved by the Apostolic See (1955) as their starting point. A further complicating factor was the fact that the canonical commission and the project commissions represented the two juxtaposed outlooks of the Order; the former being composed generally of Europeans while the latter was led by canonists from the Americas. At the chapters of 2006 and 2008, the first project was largely reworked into a new text, which also incorporated the work of the canonical commission. This new draft was then amended and approved by the 2008 general chapter and was then presented to the Apostolic See for final approbation. For the first time in its history, the official text of the Basilian Constitutions is written in Italian as opposed to Latin. Official translations in Ukrainian, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian and Polish was also submitted for approval. After examination by ecclesiastical consultants, what were to be definitive constitutions have again been approved only ad experimentum.
Although this article has described at length the various constitutions, these texts should not be equated with the reforms themselves; they are merely external and very partial reflections of the Basilian Order’s internal reality. If, in reading any given edition of the Basilians’ rules, we hope to find an accurate reflection of the Order’s lifestyle and mission, we will be dissapointed. To take only one example, the 1858 constitutions were very strict and very monastic but visitations revealed that the inidividual monks were leading decadent lifestyles and were entirely engaged by the bishops in parish work. Consistently, throughout its history, successful and lasting reforms of the Basilian Order have never emerged from the altering of their written rules. Instead, these rules were altered to conform to a shift in attitude, imparted by charismatic leaders such as Rustky, St. Josaphat, Jackowski and Welykyj. In contrast, Basilian zeal waned during periods when the Order was administered by pencil-pushers.

With vocations ever dwindling in the Americas, the future of the Basilian Order of St. Josaphat lies in Europe, especially in Ukraine. The main questions that the Order needs to confront, and which will determine its fate, were already expressed by the Ukrainian hierarchy at the turn of the twentieth century. These are: What is the role of the Order in the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church? What should be the Order's contribution to the religious life of our Church? What should be relationship of the Order’s churches to the eparchies? What human and spiritual qualities should be considered in choosing men as religious superiors? Should the Order reform its electoral system, allowing all the members an equal voice, to avoid the possibility of one caste perpetuating itself? How can the Order manage it’s wealth so as not to be managed by it? The final question which the Basilians need to address comes from the unfortunate reality of post-communist culture, but is also found in the decadence of the West, and that is: what is the Order’s attitude towards corruption in secular society and, where it occurs, even within its own ranks? This last issue will largely determine the place of the Basilians in the current life of the Ukrainian Church and also history's verdict as to its moral and spiritual contribution in the twenty-first century.

EVOLUTIO: On 14 July 2009, the Vatican office in charge of Latin-Rite religious communities issued instructions for the inspection of women's religous communities. The principal questions which each member of the community is called to answer are identical to those put forth in this post. Besides the fundamental questions about charism/identity and mission, the instruction clearly forsees the profession of additional vows (not merely promises), like the Basilian's (former?) vow of particular submission to the Roman Pontiff.

In Memory of Father Isydor Patrylo, OSBM

2008-11-01T03:00:00.000-07:00

(1919-2008)

Published in Progress Ukrainian Catholic News, no.21/2150 (16 November 2008), page 13. Also available on RISU.

On 27 October 2008, in the student monastery of Brukhovychi outside of Lviv, Father Isydor Ivan Patrylo, former general superior of the Basilian Order of St. Josaphat, passed to his eternal reward. He was eighty-nine years old, had lived seventy-six years in religious life, and served sixty-six years in priestly ministry.

Born in Sudova Vyshnia, Lviv region, Ivan Patrylo was sent to the prestigious Basilian boys college in Buchach. In 1933, at the age of fourteen, he entered the Basilian Order at Krekhiv, taking the monastic name of Isydor. He made simple vows after only two years, but because of his youth was required to wait an additional six years before becoming eligible to profess solemn vows. Patrylo’s normal course of studies and religious formation was interrupted by the Russian invasion of Western Ukraine in 1939. He and several of his confrères were thus sent to complete their university courses at the Latin-rite seminary in Olomouc, Slovakia. However, in 1942 the Gestapo arrested the students and forced them to perform manual labour. The German occupiers did not recognize their monastic status, so Patrylo’s superiors decided to have him and his companions ordained to the priesthood. As there was no Eastern-Catholic bishop available, they were ordained priests by the local Latin-rite Bishop on 2 May 1943.

Despite their new status, the newly-ordained priests were still obliged to perform heavy work. In latter years, Father Isydor often reflected on his days of forced labour in Slovakia, recounting that the young priests were worked to exhaustion and often had to sleep standing up. Upon his release, the following year, Patrylo remembered having slept without interruption for thirty-six hours. Despite the difficult wartime conditions, in 1944, Patrylo was able to defend his first doctoral dissertation in Prague. For the next four years, he provided pastoral care for the deported Ukrainian workers in Germany and in England. Then, in 1948, his superiors sent him to the Ukrainian missions in Argentina. As the Basilian province in Western Ukraine had been suppressed by the Soviets, Patrylo, without a homeland or a religious province, acquired Argentinean citizenship and was assigned, on paper, to the American Basilian Province.

Father Isydor had the mind of a scholar and the eye for minute details. Thankfully, in 1952, his gifts were recognized by the Basilian general superior, the saintly scholar, Archimandrite Teodosi Haluschynsky, who called Patrylo to Rome to be his secretary. This marked the beginning of a fifty-year Roman sojourn at the Basilian General Curia. Two years later, he defended his second doctorate, in philosophy at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, and completed a third doctorate in 1961, this time in canon law, at the Pontifical Urban University. He returned to Argentina following the death of Haluschynsky, but was reappointed to the curia in 1955 as general bursar of the Order, and in 1962 he assumed the duties of general secretary.

Patrylo had been called to Rome because of his intellectual gifts and, indeed, his historical writings became his greatest contribution to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Over the years, he published numerous articles in the Basilian scholarly publication Analecta OSBM, of which he later became the director. Of particular note is his three-volume bibliography of books touching on the history of the Ukrainian Church. In addition, he published several significant articles on the history of the Basilian Order.

Isydor Patrylo’s second important contribution to the Church was his service as protoarchimandrite (general superior) of the Basilian Order. During the Second Vatican Council, another scholar, Father Athanasius Welykyj, had been elected as general superior. Welykyj was a charismatic figure, whose wide spiritual vision seemed the most appropriate for the new spirit of openness that emerged from the Council. However, Welykyj’s vision was not understood by many local superiors and his term of office was burdened with the effects of the postconciliar crisis in the priesthood. Due to a series of strokes, Welykyj became physically incapacitated and the General Chapter of 1976 elected longtime curialist, Father Patrylo, to assume the mantle of leadership. To be sure, this was considered a safe, conservative choice for difficult times.

Although he and Welykyj shared scholarly interests, in many ways, Patrylo’s character was the opposite of his predecessor. He was not a man of great vision but rather of small, intricate details and administration. His skills were useful for the period that followed the turbulent 1960’s, one where his Order needed consolidation and maintenance of the status quo. His frugal attitude and fundraising abilities helped the Order’s general curia through many financial challenges.

In 1963, the same year that Welykyj became protoarchimandrite, the primate of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Metropolitan (later Cardinal) Josyf Slipyj was released from the Soviet gulag and came to Rome. Although Father Welykyj had been the first to draw scholarly attention to the historical idea of a Ukrainian patriarchate, the strong personalities of both him and Slipyj soon gave rise to conflict between them. In contrast, Protoarchimandrite Patrylo’s diplomatic skills helped improve relations somewhat between the primate and the Order. Indicative of this was the fact that Slipyj would make sure that Patrylo was present at any great liturgical celebration over which he was presiding.

During the Council, Patrylo headed the commission responsible for publishing Father Ivan Khomenko's Ukrainian translation of the bible. Later, as Protoarchimandrite, he guided the publication of a practical Ukrainian language volume of the divine office, entitled Molytvoslov. This text was intended principally for the Order’s internal use but it was quickly adopted by other religious and secular clergy. To this day, this book, which contains a preface by Patrylo, remains a standard liturgical text for the entire Ukrainian Catholic Church.

The 1970s and 80s, quiet and declining years for the Basilians, were followed by the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Order’s resurrection in the former communist countries. Beginning in 1990, most of the Basilians’ historical monasteries, which had been confiscated by the Soviet State in the 1940’s, were returned to the Order’s ownership. Once again, Patrylo proved to be the ideal man to deal with the new situation. The fact that he was a native of Western Ukraine and had lived the first decade of his religious life there, endowed him with a unique authority in the homeland. With this authority, he was able to curb the excessive zeal of some of the underground monks, and to bring them back into communal religious life. He took special care to reestablish the Order’s formation houses, in Mundare, Canada (1982) and Krekhiv, near Lviv (1991), to name just two.

As general bursar and later as general superior, Father Patrylo made several inspection visits to the Basilian communities throughout the world. During these trips, knowledge of several languages, including English, was greatly helpful to him. Notable visitations to Canada and the United States took place in 1957, 1959, 1967, 1977, 1987 and 1993. Not confining himself to Basilian monasteries, he also visited schools (Immaculate Heart of Mary in Winnipeg in 1977), and always participated in the prayers and devotions of the parishes, showing that a religious superior leads first-and-foremost by example.

Elected in 1976 and re-elected in 1988, Father Patrylo served two complete terms (a total of twenty years) as Basilian protoarchimandrite, the longest in the history of the Order. After stepping down in 1996, he showed his profound humility in behaving as an ordinary member of the monastic community. A rule had been passed that a retired protoarchimandrite could choose the community in which he wanted to live out his remaining years, except for the monastery in Rome. This latter exception was intended to free the new protoarchimandrite of any pressure from the former general superior. Nevertheless, because of Father Patrylo’s attitude of humble detachment from the affairs of his successor, and in view of his invaluable gifts, Protoarchimandrite (now Bishop) Dionysius Lachovicz made a special exemption to this rule, allowing Patrylo to remain in Rome. For an additional ten years, Father Isydor manifested himself as not merely a scholar but also a doer. While he was still able to coordinate Analecta OSBM, the journal remained active, but with his decline in health, the journal ceased publication.

Father Isydor’s last significant contributions were his participations in the Basilian general chapters of 2000 and 2004. During these meetings, he provided invaluable expertise and experience and proved to be a most important contributor. Above all, his sympathetic, moral presence was felt and appreciated by both young and old among the chapter participants. Unfortunately, Patrylo lost his sight in 2001 and was moved to the monastery in Brukhovychi in 2006. After sixty-plus years abroad, he had finally returned to live in his homeland. Father Isydor Patrylo’s death marks the end of an era and the passing of the last of the great Basilian historical scholars from Ukraine.