The Pontifical Ruthenian College, 1897–1915

Between Roman Universalism and National Consciousness

The Collegio Ruteno in Rome was founded, in 1897, to educate Ruthenian-Ukrainian seminarians from Austrian Galicia in a Catholic universalist spirit (Romanitas). The Ruthenian College eventually fulfilled its purpose, but its early years were characterized by mediocre leadership and burnout among the superiors, and factionalism among the students. College life was played out against the backdrops of political-religious events in Rome and in Galicia. Rather than simply imbuing Ukrainians with Romanitas, the College also brought Ukrainian problems to Rome. 

Very little has been written about the College’s early years perhaps because of the many tragedies and difficulties that occurred. The few works that exist are quasi-hagiographical chronologies that scrupulously avoided controversies. Based on archival sources, this paper seeks to present a contextualized view of the its early history and to reveal aspects passed over by its official chroniclers.

 

Ruthenians in Urbe

            In 1596, a portion of the Orthodox Kyivan Metropolia entered into full communion with the Roman Church (Union of Brest). The same year, two Ruthenian seminarians were sent to Rome to study at the Greek College for three years. One of them, Yosyf Veliamyn Rutsky, later become Kyivan Metropolitan. He obtained four places for his seminarians at the College in 1615, expanded to six in 1623. Thenceforth to 1803, when the College was closed during the Napoleonic occupation, thirty-nine Ruthenian seminarians graduated from the Greek College, including most of the Uniate hierarchy.

Under Austria, Ruthenian seminarians studied at Propaganda Fide’s Theatine College in Lemberg (Lviv). But in 1784, Joseph II abolished the College and founded a Greek-Catholic Major Seminary. After the Greek College was reopened, in 1845, the Austrian Government retuned the Theatine Fund to Propaganda, which facilitated the return of Ruthenian seminarians to Rome. As the proportion of Ruthenians within that College increased, its name was changed to Pontificium Collegium Graecorum et Ruthenorum. From 1845 to 1897, sixty-two Ruthenian seminarians graduated, including the future Cardinal Sylvester Sembratovych, the spiritus movens behind the foundation of a separate college. Besides the Lviv Seminary, Joseph II also founded a college in Vienna known as the Barbareum, next to Saint Barbara’s, the Ruthenian Church in Vienna. Gifted seminarians boarded there and studied at Vienna University.

 

Their Own College

The creation of a Ruthenian seminary in Rome was primarily the result of political-religious issues in Austria. Until the late nineteenth century, the Greek-Catholic clergy was the elite class in Galician Ruthenian society. In the 1840s, the Lviv Greek-Catholic Seminary was one of centres of the Ruthenian national movement. But by the 1870s, both the Lviv and the Vienna seminaries had become nests of Moscophilism, and state and church officials demanded their reform. This was to be one of Sylvester Sembratovych’s primary tasks. His crowning achievement was holding a Provincial Council (the Lviv Synod). The Synod called for the reorganization of the seminary system and praised clerical celibacy. The married clergy saw it as an attempt to assimilate the Ruthenians to the Latin Church and Polish culture.

The Austrian Government had been wanting to suppress the Barbareum in Vienna since 1874. The college was abruptly closed in 1893 after Sembratovych was attacked by Moscophile students (including 2 seminarians). In compensation, the Ministry of Religion and Education agreed to send six more seminarians to the Greek College, bringing the total to ten). The Government also promised to establish seminaries in Lviv’s suffragan eparchies of Przemyśl and Stanyslaviv.

With Leo XIII’s Unionist reforms in full swing, the Greek-Ruthenian College needed a larger building just at the time when Ruthenians were enrolling there in greater numbers. Their increased number provoked conflicts with the College's other nationalities such as Italo-Greeks and especially Romanians. As a result, Sembratovych and his suffragans began to lobby for the creation of a college exclusively for Ruthenians. In his dying year, Sembratovych convinced Propaganda Fide to build a new 4-story building with room for 16 students. It was adjacent to the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Piazza Madonna dei Monti, where the Ruthenian procurature had stood since the 1640s. Emperor Franz Joseph paid 100,000 Lire, Propaganda loaned the College 42,301, and the rest of the total 181,807 Lire was paid by benefactors.

On 18 December 1897, Leo XIII issued the bull Paternam benevolentiam, founding the institution specifically for the Greek-Catholic Ruthenians of the Metropolitan Province of Lviv-Halych (Later, Hungarian eparchs also sent seminarians). In the College, Sembratovych saw one of his principal goals accomplished but he was too ill to attend its opening and died of cancer the following year. In his stead he deputized Bishop Konstantyn Chekhovych of Przemyśl to perform the inaugural blessing on 19 December 1897. Twelve seminarians transferred from the Greek College.

 

Jesuit Superiors (1897–1904)

Sembratovych settled for the Jesuits of the Roman Province, who were already administering the Greek College of St. Athanasius, but only until the Basilian Order could assume command. The Jesuits were very unpopular among Ukrainians in Austria, and tensions between them and their pupils had already shown themselves ta the Greco-Ruthenian College. As a result, Ukrainians were reluctant study in Rome. Another difficulty was that the Italian Jesuits were not familiar with the Byzantine-Ruthenian Rite nor with the Ukrainian language, and culture. They were unable to identify challenges faced by the Greek-Catholic clergy and did not sympathize with their national concerns.

At the beginning of the academic year, the autumn of 1897, Jesuit superiors transferred from the Greek to the Ruthenian College and the Greek College was entrusted to Benedictines. The Jesuit superiors consisted in three priests: a Rector, a Minister, and a Spiritual Director. Two or three Jesuit brothers also served as cooks and sacristans. In addition, lay servants were engaged as porters, cleaners, and waiters. The Minister responsible for all matters concerning discipline and provisions. the spiritual director offered Confessions and spiritual talks, counselling, and preached the annual retreat. Unlike the Greek-College, seminarians worshipped liturgically in the Byzantine Rite only. Nevertheless, outside of the liturgy parallel disciplines were maintained: Latin for the Jesuits and the servants, and Byzantine for the Ukrainians. The Jesuits prayed privately except for the Spiritual Director, who administered Benediction at the end of the day according to the Latin Ritual. Dual disciplines meant that, on certain days, the superiors were feasting while the seminarians were fasting, and vice versa. In addition, the Jesuits also passed on their Latin-style non-liturgical practices and devotions to their charges.

College food was local and of a high standard. The Jesuits maintained a regimented system of meals in which the number and kind of foods was regulated according to the rank of the liturgical feast. In addition to Latin and Ruthenian Feasts, the feasts of major Jesuit Saints were also commemorated, at which the Superiors were served coffee with rosolio (liqueurs) and deserts. Meals were held in silence with readings from spiritual books, as was the custom in all Catholic seminaries. The Superiors took their daily recreation separately.

The first Rectors were Rodolfo Isolani (1897–1899) and Eugenio Polidori (1899–1903). Isolani published books on spirituality and Marian sodalities. Polidori published on the history of Italy (1886), on the exclusion of religion from Italian public education (1892), and a refutation of von Harnack’s rationalist exegesis (The Fourth Gospel, 1903). It is likely that Polidori was appointed to impose stricter discipline, as he appears to have been more austere than others. For example, he discontinued the traditional fave dei morti on All Souls Day, to the disappointment of staff and students alike. 

Polidori’s heart was at the Civiltà Cattolica where he often lunched. After four years, he was appointed superior of that apostolate. On 4 October 1903, Father Giovanni Maria Nobili Vitelleschi (1853–1908) was transferred from the elite Mondragone College to succeed him. The last and most popular Jesuit rector of the college has been airbrushed out of the College’s history by Ukrainian chroniclers. Vitelleschi, was well known for his pedagogical skills. He was a musician and tolerant in discipline. One of his compositions had been admired by Giacomo Puccini. In November, he restored the fave dei morti to everyone’s delight. He made various improvements to the college, including installing electric lighting and buying a pianoforte. He was also the only rector whose biography was published.

The Minister of the College was Father Galeassi. He kept the college chronicle meticulously and oversaw the finances and the day to day running of the instruction. After it was announced that the Jesuits were withdrawing, he lost his initiative and forgot to arrange for festive meals on several Byzantine Rite feast days. In the last month of the Jesuit administration, he was replaced, due to exhaustion. In December 1902 the Spiritual director Pietro Borselli became ill (dying 4 months later) and had to be replaced temporarily by Giovanni Soriani and Pietro Castelloni, and permanently by Pio De Mandato from May 1903.

The Jesuits accepted the charge over the Ruthenians seminarians but, as their chronicle reveals, their concerns were with their Order’s affairs. They prayed privately and continued to teach and hear confessions in other colleges and churches. Guests at the College were mainly Italian Jesuits in transit or on retreat, and alumni from their institutions such as the elite Mondragone college near Frascati. In turn, the College superiors lodged at other Jesuit institutions to rest or make their own retreats

In July 1904, Cardinal Gotti informed the Jesuit General that the College was to be entrusted to the Ukrainian Basilians in November. The College Superiors were officially informed on this on 28 July. On 9 October, shortly after the seminary had returned from summer vacation, Vitelleschi left for his new assignment, leaving the Minister and Spiritual Director in charge until the Basilians took office. The remaining two Jesuits left at the end of the October 1904.

 

Ukrainian teacher and Prefects

The Greek College had to engage a priest of their nationality to teach the Ruthenian seminarians their particular liturgical ritual and music. This arrangement was maintained at the Ruthenian College, but the priest also had an additional duty of celebrating Divine services for the seminarians. The only priest in Rome was the bishops’ procurator, Vasyl Levytsky, who was already functioning in this role at the Greek College. After only a short time, however, he stepped on toes by complaining, on behalf of Bishop Chekhovych, that Jesuits were introducing Latin devotions to the seminarians. By the autumn of 1902, he had lost interest in the College and had to be replaced by Aleksander Ulytsky, who abandoned his post without warning after serving only five months. The new Procurator, Mykhailo Jatskovsky, took over the role in April 1903. On Sundays and feast days, Bulgarian Bishop Lazar Mladenov celebrated Divine Liturgy in the church for the seminarians. Otherwise, services were held in the domestic chapel, especially in winter.

            Given the Jesuits’ reserve, greater influence was exercised over the students by the prefect (a student priest) or the vice-prefect. The Prefects were a go-between between staff and students and wrote the instructions for seminarians in their native tongue. In 1903, Ivan Lutsyk was named prefect after his ordination, and seminarian Yosyf Kotsylovsky was made vice-prefect who was known as the beadle.

 

Basilians (1904–1915)

The Jesuits had been charged, in 1882, with reforming the decadent Basilians into zealous reformers that would educate a clerical and lay elite in a loyal Catholic spirit. By the end of the nineteenth century, Government and Church officials were clamouring for reformed Basilians to take charge of the Greek-Catholic seminary system. In Ruthenian-Ukrainian society, there were heated debates over the role of the Jesuits, which hastened to end their direct involvement in the Greek-Catholic Church. 

Some of the Ruthenian clergy thought it should have been given to Basilians from the beginning. Already in September 1902, the conflict between the Bishops’ procurator and the Jesuits led Sembratovych’s successor, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, to suggest that members of his own Order might be more suited to run the College. The following summer, the Prefect of Propaganda Fide asked Sheptytsky and the Jesuit Provincial of the Basilians, Father Peter Bapst, if the Basilians were prepared to do so. Sheptytsky dithered for a year, to the annoyance of Bapst, who demanded a decision. In July 1904, Sheptytsky finally agreed, and Bapst accepted on the Basilians’ behalf.

Bapst consulted Sheptytsky on the choice of personnel. He first proposed priests who had studied in Rome and knew Italian, Luka Ivantsiv as Rector and Pavlo Demchuk as Spiritual Director. A brother scholastic was to serve as prefect and a lay brother as cook. Before the decision could be made, the Jesuits resigned from the Basilian reform and the new superiors had to make their own selection. Arseniy Lozynsky was selected over Ivantsiv (fortuitously, it turned out) and he and Demchuk arrived in Rome on 14 October 1904. For two weeks, they observed the workings of the college under the two remaining Jesuits. The Basilians took charge on 1 November 1904.

Like their predecessors, the Basilians stood somewhat aloof from their diocesan seminarians although they were more austere than Jesuits, for instance, in diet. Nevertheless, were unable to deal with the nationalistic conflicts between seminarians. The stress caused Lozynsky to lose his health and, by the end of the academic year, the new Basilian Provincial, Platonid Filas, proposed that he be replaced by Demchuk. Propaganda would not permit this because, as spiritual director, Demchuk had been privy to the seminarians’ private faults. This would constitute a violation of the canonical separation between the internal and the external forums. The Basilian Provincial Council recommended Adrian Davyda, superior of Drohobych. Filas presented the candidate and Cardinal Gotti appointed him rector after obtaining Metropolitan Sheptytsky’s approval.

Father Davyda had a stronger character but was unable to resolve the conflict between the different national tendencies. In June 1907 a group of seminarians complained to the Congregation of about the tensions within the College. Davyda favoured the majority Ukrainophiles and tried to ban Moscophile seminarians, but his proposed rules were not approved by the Congregation.

Father Demchuk’s health also began to fail, and he was recalled to Galicia and replaced with Ivantsiv in March 1908. Luka Ivantsiv suffered from mania and severe scruples and began to complain incessantly to Propaganda about the rector. In July 1908, he had a complete mental collapse and was confined to a religious house in Ancona, where he died.

To resolve the situation, Filas proposed to replace Davyda with Lazar Berezovsky, who had been student prefect in the Lviv Seminary and superior of the Basilian community and press in Zhovkva. Metropolitan Sheptytsky suggested that Davyda remain for a time and later be recalled for health reasons, since Ivantsiv’s accusations had been exaggerated. Gotti asked Father Filas to do just that, but Davyda did not return to Rome so, on 23 September 1908, Berezovsky was named rector.

Lazar Berezovsky’s tenure, from 1908 until the closure of the College in 1915, brought peace and stability to the College. By 1910, the superiors were adding the title, “ad S. Josaphat” to the name of the College, a title which replaced the designation “Ruteno” in 1932. In July 1910, Berezovsky prepared a fresh draft of the College rules, which were approved by Pius X ad experimentum in September 1911. The following year, the esteemed pedagogue Teodoziy Halushchynsky was named spiritual director. During this period, the College rectors became consultants to the Roman Curia on Ruthenian-Ukrainian affairs. 

 

National Identity

Indoctrinating the young Ruthenian-Ukrainians with Roman Universalism was difficult, since their hearts and minds were oriented toward their native land. The principal question among the Ruthenians was national identity and national rights within the Empire. Indeed, this question was the principal problem in Austrian politics of the time. In the year of thew College’s opening, the nationalities question led to a parliamentary crisis and the fall of the government. And a month before the opening, a group of seminarians protested the Propaganda that devotions at the college should be in their own language.

There were two main tendencies of Ruthenian national identity in Galicia: Ukrainophile and Russophile (the Russophiles, in turn, were divided between Old Ruthenophoiles, who were basically church traditionalists, and Moscophiles). Moscophiles saw themselves as a branch of Russian imperial culture; Ukrainophiles saw themselves as part to the culture of Little Rus from Russian Ukraine. In addition, Ruthenians struggled against the assimilation program by the Polish ruling classes. 

Moscophiles were religiously conservative but pro-Orthodox and politically pro-Russian. Ukrainophiles were ideological liberals some of whom gravitated toward anticlericalism and socialism. At first, the Greek-Catholic hierarchy favour one or the other. The student prefects were ordered to write instructions in the neutral phonetic script used by Greek-Catholic chanceries, which was neither Church Slavonic nor vernacular Ukrainian. Many of the Moscophile seminarians belonged to the Lviv Archeparchy because Metropolitan Sheptytsky had not yet made up his mind on the issue. In 1902, he issued a pastoral letter to his clergy, admonishing them not to bicker over national identity. And Fathers Ivantsiv and Demchuk had been proposed for the College because they were neutral, while the majority of Basilians were Ukrainophiles.

In May 1905, the simmering tensions between the factions exploded. The first-year alumni were due to swear the oath that they would be ordained in celibacy. When the Secretary of Propaganda came to receive their oath, five out of eight had scruples about the contents of Alexander VII’s bull, which had been read in the refectory the day before. Rolleri told them that everything would be clarified by the rector but Lozynsky was unable to provide a convincing explanation and had to call for backup from his deputy. Demchuk argued that the archaic contents of the bull was not binding, only the oath. Lozynsky was unable to cope and confined himself to his room. Solemnities were cancelled and a tense atmosphere hung over the college. Lozynsky tried to lay the blame others and sought to expel the leaders of both factions, including the future Bishop Kotsylovsky, the student prefect and a leader of the Ukrainophiles.

Meanwhile, both factions wrote to the Pope and to Cardinal Gotti. The first Basilian chronicler of the College wrote that the Pope threatened to close the college unless harmony was restored. In fact, the Pope’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val, called Cardinal Gotti of Propaganda to discuss the situation, but did not propose any drastic measures. Lozynsky assured Propaganda that harmony had been restored but he had lost control and was allowed to leave gracefully, in October 1905.

The conflict simmered quietly for the next two years. Rector Davyda allowed Ukrainian newspapers but forbade the Moscophile Galichanin and wrote to the bishops not to send any more Moscophile seminarians. Lviv Archeparchy ignored him and sent two out of four. The Ukrainophile party gained a permanent foothold in the 1907 Austrian elections. Metropolitan Sheptytsky began to favour the Ukrainophiles and isolate the Moscophiles. The Rector did the same at the College. In 1906, he expelled four seminarians and, in December 1907, dismissed the leader of the Moscophiles, Ivan Kozorovsky. In March 1908, Davyda attempted to enshrine the ban on Moscophile seminarians in the College rules. Although his draft was rejected his successor’s (approved in 1911) included “inciting political discord” as grounds for expulsion. The national identity conflict was never mentioned in the chronicle after 1906 and the College appears to have avoided any reverberations from the fierce battle waged at the Lviv seminary, in February 1912, which resulted in its closing for several months. At the beginning of that year, several seminarians left the Ruthenian College rather than take the mandatory celibacy oath envisioned in the new rules.

Father Davyda was credited with having given the College a Ukrainian character. Thenceforth it became a place to visit Ukrainian hierarchs, clergy, and pilgrims, as well as leading intellectual figures such as Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Vadym Scherbakivsky, and Modest Sosenko. Metropolitan Sheptytsky made annual visits and Bishop Soter Ortynsky was given a grand send off on his way to the United States to become the first Greek-Catholic bishop in the Americas. 

Despite their Ukrainian focus, students participated in the principal Roman holidays (such as All Saints and All Souls and Corpus Domini) and annual festivities such as the anniversary of the College’s founder, Pope Leo XIII. On occasion, they spoke with Pope Leo and more often with Pius X at private audiences. Each year, superiors and students celebrated the onomastic, birthday, and regnal anniversaries of Emperor Franz Joseph, and brought greetings to the Austro-Hungarian embassy. Seminarians went to the Vatican to see visiting monarchs such as Britain’s Edward VII and Germany’s Wilhelm II. They took part in the mourning for the death of Leo XIII and celebrated the election and coronation of Pius X. The college chronicler also recorded the rector and students attending a rally at the French College to protest the anti-clerical laws, in 1907.

On 28 June 1914, the Basilian chronicler recorded their shock and disappointment at the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. Ukrainians considered the Austrian heir to the throne sympathetic to their cause. This event and the ensuing First World war completely eclipsed the death of Pius X and the election of Benedict XV, which were passed over by the chronicler.

 

Celibacy

The second major issue at the College was mandatory celibacy, which was tightly connected with the question of national identity. Pressure from the Roman Curia to promote clerical celibacy was looked on as a Polish plot to decapitate one of the core Ukrainian institutions. Ukrainians looked up their married priestly class, highly engaged in national affairs, as a cornerstone of their national movement. And many seminarians were themselves sons of priests. The Papal Legate had attempted to favour celibacy at the 1891 Lviv Synod, prompting fierce opposition from the clergy. 

Some Ukrainian seminarians were reluctant to study in Rome because they had to swear the oath prescribed by Urban VIII and Alexander VII to remain in celibacy. In addition, before receiving a doctorate, they had to have been ordained a deacon. Many chose to return home at their end of their fourth year of theology, without a doctorate, so they could be married before being ordained.

The Jesuit Rectors took a very moderate approach to the issue. Their philosophy was that it was better to encourage voluntary celibacy than force the seminarians. The Jesuits allowed the old oaths to fallen into disuse. Father Polidori had wanted to make the oaths into partial promises because the Ukrainian bishops were more concerned with forced celibacy than with the normative married clergy. Yet, Propaganda Fide ordered him to bring the oath back int practice. Polidori had to call the seminarians together to inform them of the decision. In addition, on 31 May 1900, he gave them a long talk about the oath and the educational and financial benefits of studying in Rome. He also called each seminarian to his room to have a personal discussion about the oath. Most were still reluctant but 12 finally took the oath and two left. The following year, everybody accepted the oath without protest. Polidori continued to promote celibacy as a free choice because he believed that a Roman education was already exerting a powerful influence in that direction.

The debate over the status of the celibacy oath considerably delayed approval the college rules. After approving a draft, on 12 July 1910, Pius X added the proviso that no one was to be formally admitted unless they promised to live in celibacy. Nevertheless, the oath could be delayed for a year after their arrival. In July 1912, Cardinal Gotti ordered that anyone seeking to prolong the oath beyond a year had to be sent home.

 

College Life

The course of theological studies lasted four years. Ukrainians were slightly older than many of their other Roman counterparts because the Austrian authorities required them to complete gymnasium before entering the seminary. The pontifical education system was stricter than in Austria and mature seminarians found it difficult to accept being deprived of previously held freedoms. The seminarians spoke Ukrainian and Polish among themselves but very little Italian, leading Vitelleschi to remark: “In an attempt to be understood, I spoke to them in Trastevere (Roman) dialect and Germanize the endings.”

The academic year began on 1 November. New students wore secular attire for six months or a year, until they swore their oath. After this they were clothed in the blue college cassock with a yellow sash, the Ukrainian national colours, chosen by Sembratovych. Correspondence with outsiders was discouraged except with family, their bishop, and benefactors. During the month of May, each seminarian had to preach a short practice sermon in his native language. Inside College, they were to keep silent in corridors and required permission had from the prefect or beadle to speak with other seminarians. Conversations were limited to 4 to 5 minutes and then only at the student’s door, as they were forbidden from entering their rooms. During free time, they were permitted to speak with others in common room and to go for walks but only in pairs. Cash was to be deposited with the rector. Seminarians were permitted to bathe weekly but not more, except during vacation when they stayed near the sea and groups went swimming daily.

The daily schedule was virtually identical to that of other Roman Colleges. Awards were handed out annually to the best students at Propaganda Fide College. During their last year, seminarians were to dedicate an hour daily to studying the liturgical services and Church Slavonic. Those who remained for higher studies, beyond the fourth year, could be ordained in Rome after taking ordination exams from the Vicariate of Rome. From 1897 to 1915, the Bulgarian Bishop performed these ordinations.

Although it had an historical connection, Piazza Madonna die Monti was not particularly suited for seminary life due to the clamour in the streets. In the piazza, fish, meat, and fruit mongers sold their wares in the morning. At night and into the early morning hours, revellers shouted and sang, accompanied by mandolin and guitar. Father Vitelleschi, whose window faced the Piazza degli Zingari, compared the atmosphere disparagingly to Naples. The Roman climate and diet did not agree with all the seminarians or even the superiors, and some returned home for health reasons. Each year, the college left Rome for the summer. The Jesuits had arranged to rent the seminary in Tivoli. Gita or outings were organized regularly for sightseeing and exercise.

 

The First World War

On 28 July 1914, the College chronicler recorded Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia, when the seminary was still on vacation. They returned to Rome, as usual, in October, but no new diocesan seminarians arrived that year, only three Basilian scholastics, who had been forced to study abroad due to the Russian occupation of Galicia. The College celebrated Christmas but there was to be no Easter because, once Italy entered the war on the Entente side, 8 May 1915, the Austrian Embassy informed its subjects they they must leave the country. On 9 and 10 May, the superiors and eleven seminarians left via Zurich for Vienna, where they were met by Father Filas. The diocesans went to a temporary seminary in Kromeriž, Moravia, run by Father Kotsylovsky. (Among them was future Archbishop Ivan Buchko, who was ordained a priest in Kromeriž. From 1942 until his death in 1974, he resided at the new College building on the Janiculum.) Father Halushchynsky took the Basilian scholastics to a seminary near Vienna owned by the Verbite order. They all returned home once the Russians retreated from Galicia.

Father Berezovsky retuned to direct the College when it was reopened, in 1921. At that time, Ukrainian identity and self-determination became a major issue. To eliminate the title “Ruthenian” but without adopting “Ukrainian” which was banned in Galicia (under Polish rule), the name was changed to “Pontifical College of Saint Josaphat.”

Both Berezovsky and Halushchynsky were destined to spend a lifetime in the Eternal City. Berezovsky served as rector for a second time from in 1921 to 1925 and returned to Rome as a General Counsellor of the Basilian Curia from 1932 to 1946. Halushchynsky became Spiritual Director for a second time in 1931 and served in that position until his appointment as Basilian Superior General, in 1949. Both men died in 1952.

I am very grateful to my friends and colleagues Father Yeronim Hrim, OSBM, Father Joseph Koczera, SJ, and Dr Gianfranco Armando, who lent assistance and advice on this topic.

Presented on 15 December 2023  the international academic conference I collegi per stranieri a Roma, 1850–1915, hosted by the Instituto Nazionale per i Studi Romani. Publication forthcoming in February 2024.

Sylvester Sembratovych: A Return to Ukrainian History

 

A modern proverb says that “history is written by the victors.” Before history became a critical science (discipline), it was meant to be a lesson in morality and patriotism, a story told through the genres of myth and epic. Even modern Ukrainian historians recounted their people’s saga from the perspective of an overall ideal, complete with clear-cut heroes and villains. Those who did not share that ideal were quietly airbrushed out of history.

            Sylvester Sembratovych (1836–1898) is someone who appears to have suffered such a fate. His name does not appear in the index of most Ukrainian histories and his figure receives only marginal reference in the history of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Yet, Sylvester was a figure of enormous importance during his lifetime. Not only became leader of the Greek-Catholic Church, he was also one of only six Ruthenian-Ukrainians to have been raised to the cardinatial dignity. And without his pastoral outreach, it is questionable whether that Church would have, already at the dawn of the twentieth century, become a global reality.  

            So why has Sylvester been ignored? Despite his patriotic ideals, his critics created a caricature of him as a sell-out to the enemies of the nation. His second “sin” was not to have adhered to the party that was later victorious in the battle over national identity. The winners eventually turned their attention and affection to his successor, Andrey Sheptytsky, and wrote Sembratovych out of history.

 

The Sembratovychs and Ruthenian Factions

            In the nineteenth century, Ruthenians in the Russian and Austrian Empires went through the process of the awakening of national consciousness. This process was stifled in Russia but permitted in Austria, partly as a counterbalance to keep the Poles in check in Galicia. The Ruthenian national idea was divided into two juxtaposed concepts: Russophile and Ukrainophile. Among the Russophiles, John-Paul Himka and Ostap Sereda made a crucial distinction between two currents/moments: Old Ruthenophile and Moscophile. (I do not touch on the vexed question of national consciousness in the Hungarian Kingdom.)  

Both Russophiles and Ukrainophiles saw themselves as linguistically and culturally separate from Poles. They differed in how they viewed the relation of Austrian Ruthenians to the “Little Russians” of the Russian Empire. The Old Ruthenophiles were the generation of 1848, who had founded the national movement. They saw themselves as a separate nationality of 3 million within the boundaries of the Habsburg Monarchy. Moscophiles saw Galician Ruthenians as part of a greater Russian nation whereas Ukrainophiles considered them, together 22 million Little Russians, as constituting a Ukrainian nation.

The Sembratovych family came from the Lemko region in the Peremyshl (Przemyśl) Eparchy. They were a typical clerical family with son succeeding father and uncle helping nephews to obtain church appointments. Sylvester’s father Antoniy had four brothers, three of which were priests. Of the four, Yosyf (Joseph) had done particularly well. When he became rector of the Greek-Catholic seminary in Vienna, he brought his nephews Sylvester and Yulian to study there. When Yosyf was transferred to Rome and made a bishop, his nephews were not far behind. Although Ukrainian historians rejected Sylvester they were accepting toward Yosyf. Yet Sylvester could not have become a church leader without his uncle, as his career was determined by Yosyf’s successes and failings.

By the end of eighteenth century, the Ruthenian nobility had absorbed a Polish or Russian identity. In Austria, the nation’s remaining literate class, the Greek-Catholic clergy, played the decisive role in the process of national awakening. During the revolution of 1848 the clergy had led the Ruthenian nation in asserting its existence, siding with the Habsburgs against the rebellious Poles. The Ruthenian clergy hoped to gain civil rights for their people within the empire, perhaps even equal to those of the Poles. To this purpose, they pursued a conservative program hallmarked by loyalty to the Dynasty and Old Ruthenophile ideology. As the Metropolitan and his canons represented this faction in the Austrian parliament, it was named the “Saint George Party” after their place of residence, Saint George’s Archcathedral complex.

The situation changed in the 1860s following a series of military defeats and territorial losses by Austria. To maintain his remaining realms the Emperor agreed to a compromise (Außgleich) in 1867, whereby the state was divided into two governments, Austria and Hungary. On the Austrian side, Galicia was handed to the Polish aristocracy to govern. They began to Polonize the territory, including the civil administration and the educational system. The Ruthenians blamed their losses on their own church hierarchy and many turned to Moscophilism, which became predominant among the Greek-Catholic clergy in the 1870s.

For all of its political conservatism and despite its Catholic majority, since the 1780s the Austrian State had been at odds with the Church over an Enlightenment-inspired policy known as Josephinism (for Emperor Joseph II). A form of liberal rationalism, Josephinism treated the Church as something to be regulated by the state. And Josephinism sought to banish the Church’s moral influence from the lives of its citizens. Church administration was to be micromanaged by state officials; seminarians were to be trained less doctrinally and more practically, to become petty civic functionaries. Greek-Catholic clergy would also absorb aspects of the Josephinist mindset.

The pious Emperor Franz Joseph and made peace with the Church and repealed most of the Josephinist legislation. In 1855 he signed a treaty with the Holy See regulating church affairs in his realms. The concordat granted more autonomy to the church over its educational institutions. And the government agreed to cover the costs of sending a number of gifted seminaries for study in Rome, to study at one of the colleges under the supervision of the papal department for the missions, Propaganda Fide.

In order to be chosen to study at a Roman College, seminarians had to promise to be ordained in celibacy. They also undertook to write Propaganda each year, giving an account of their activities and of the local situation. They returned to Galicia with a changed outlook on church and national affairs: less provincial, more cosmopolitan and ultramontane in Catholicity, less status-quo in pedagogy, more zealous in ideas for renewal and, above-all, anti-Josephinist. These younger priests referred to themselves as “The Romans”. They were graduates of Rome’s best clerical training institutions, convinced followers of the Roman pedagogical system and theological school that opposed the liberal doctrines of the age. Sylvester Sembratovych was one of their number.

 

The “Romans” Come Home 

After completing a doctorate in Sacred Theology, in the summer of 1861, Father Sylvester returned to his native Peremyshl Eparchy where he was given pastoral work. Unfortunately, he was unable to find the available teaching position for which a higher education had qualified him. As a result, the following year he asked for a transfer to the Lviv Archeparchy. Sylvester began his service in Lviv as chaplain and religion instructor at a Basilian nuns convent. In April 1863, he was named one of four prefects for the students of the Greek-Catholic Seminary. In August 1865, he obtained the post of adjunct professor of dogmatic theology at Lviv University, and became a full professor in December 1869. In 1873 he received the Imperial habilitation diploma, and lastly he served as dean of theology faculty.

The Liberal doctrines that were spreading across Europe had not yet arrived at Lviv University. There was, however, an intense rivalry between Latin Catholics and Greek-Catholics. In cities, Ruthenians felt the pull to the Latin Rite of the majority of the urban population; in the countryside, Poles were assimilating to the predominant Greek Rite. In 1863, the year Sylvester began his professorship, Propaganda brokered a truce between the Latin and Greek hierarchies known as Concordia. It prohibited one rite poaching of the faithful of the other and divided families of mixed-rite: the sons were to follow the rite of the father while the daughters that of the mother.

The Lviv theology faculty had students from both Latin and Greek and also from the Armenian Rite. At the beginning of his professorial career, Sylvester experienced the national-ritual rivalry first-hand when the Latin Archbishop of Lviv tried to block his appointment as adjunct professor in order to give the post to fellow Pole. It was only the intervention of Propaganda Fide that secured Sylvester the post. The Vatican favoured the “Romans” and encouraged the Greek-Catholic hierarchy to appoint them to educational posts in the seminary. Such posts had little prestige and income, but they were important for influencing the minds and hearts of the upcoming generation. Among the “Romans,” Izydor Dolnytsky was equal in importance to Sylvester. He was brought back from Rome in 1877 to become spiritual director of the large, unmanageable Greek-Catholic seminary.

The Greek-Catholic Church bureaucracy was dominated by canons of the cathedral chapters, mostly widowers from clerical families. Joseph II had established their ecclesiastical monopoly and they in turn adopted a Josephinist mind-set that blurred the limits between Church and State. In 1868, Ruthenian priests that were parliamentary deputies voted in favour of the notorious “May Laws,” which curtailed the role of the Church in civil society and introduced civil marriage, divorce, etc. In voting for the May Laws, the clergy were following the age-old Ruthenian strategy to support whatever government was in power, in this case a liberal ministry, in the hopes of cueing favour for their nationality. The Emperor reluctantly approved some of these laws, but drew the line at suppressing monasteries and convents. From Rome, Pope Pius IX issued a thunderous condemnation.

Uncle Yosyf was also brought back from Rome to strengthen the Catholic perspective of the Ruthenian Church. In 1869 he was made temporary administrator of Peremysl and in 1870, Metropolitan-Archbishop of Lviv-Halych, primate of the Church. Yosyf Sembratovych was a zealous shepherd but a mediocre administrator. For the latter, he relied on the structure in place headed by the adroit Mykhailo Malynovsky, who became his right hand and éminence grise.

It was natural that the new metropolitan would also look to his clever nephew. He encouraged Sylvester’s projects to publish vernacular prayerbooks and “a little paper for the clergy in Ruthenian to combat many modern evils.” Sylvester turned to the “Romans” and some other gifted clerics. John-Paul Himka named this group “The Sion circle” after the clergy journal that first appeared in 1871, Ruskiy Sion (Ruthenian Zion). 

Zion was the mountain in Jerusalem where God’s saving grace became manifest. This could have been an allusion to the Vatican Hill, the capital of Catholicism, or to the idea that following their reform agenda would save the Greek-Catholic Church from ruin brought about by liberal and Moscophile doctrines inimical to the Catholic religion. The old guard resented the young celibate “Romans” and their Ultramontane reform agenda. As long as the Saint George Party held the positions of power, the “Romans” could not exert decisive influence over church affairs. A generational and ideological clash was in the making.

 

Shifting Alliances

Before an internal clash could take place, an event happened across the border with Russia that reverberated all the way to Vienna and Rome. Following a Polish uprising in 1863, Russia clamped down on Catholics and laid plans for the assimilation of the last bastion of Uniate Catholicism, the Kholm Eparchy, into the Russian Orthodox Church. Moscophile Greek-Catholic priests from Galicia were enticed to accept well paid positions in Kholm. In 1875 the eparchy was declared part of the Russian Orthodox Church by and Imperial ukase (decree), although most of the faithful continued to adhere secretly to Catholicism (only to return in 1905 when religious liberty was granted).

Hitherto allies, the 1870s Russia and Austria became rivals over the Balkans. Vienna considered the role that the Galician clergy had played in the Kholm schism as a portent of what would happen in Galicia, unless something was done to stem Moscophilism at home. And in 1877, Apostolic Nuncio Jacobini travelled from Vienna to inspect Galicia, and concluded it was rife with pro-Russian tendencies. Both the Polish elites as well as and the “Romans” identified the ringleaders as the canons of the Saint George Chapter. Propaganda Fide drew up a list of reforms but Metropolitan Yosyf and Canon Malynovsky argued that Rome had fallen for Polish propaganda against patriotic Ruthenians.

 Metropolitan Yosyf might have been wanted to gradually prepare Sylvester for higher office. Nevertheless, the nephew could not complete for a place in his uncle’s heart with the powerful and talented Malynovsky, who as a celibate was also eligible for the episcopacy. The Poles, however, would not allow it; they viewed him and Canon Hryhoriy Shashkevych of Peremyshl as strong opponents to their plans. Alhough the Saint George Party had defended the Ruthenians against Polish hegemony, the Polish elites had too much power and influence in Vienna and Rome. 

Both the Poles and the “Romans” considered Metropolitan Yosyf to be soft on Moscophilism, but they blamed this on Malynovsky’s evil influence. Propaganda Fide chose Sylvester Sembratovych as an agent of reform and recommended that he be made archpriest of the chapter of canons and auxiliary bishop to the metropolitan. By these appointments, Rome hoped the nephew would exert a positive influence over the uncle, but the Metropolitan threatened to resign rather than part with Malynovsky. In the end, he reluctantly accepted his nephew as head of the chapter and auxiliary, and Sylvester received episcopal consecration at the hands of his uncle on 20 April 1879.

 

“Roman” Offensive

            The “Romans” among the Greek-Catholic clergy were never pro-Polish but neither did they identify entirely with the emerging Ukrainophile identity. One might refer to their ethnic-political conceptions as “Proto-Ukainophile” or “Old Ukrainophile.” From his student days, Sylvester had identified with patriotic Ruthenian initiatives. In their correspondence with Propaganda, he and Dolnytsky both warned that there could be no peace in Galicia unless Ruthenians were given equal rights. But unlike the Saint George Party, the “Romans” perceived Moscophilism as the greater danger. As Dolnytsky wrote to Propaganda: “The Russians are smarter than the Poles because, while the Poles attack Ruthenian customs, the Russians support them.”

            Sylvester’s appointment as auxiliary bishop emboldened the “Romans” to make a direct assault on the power of the old guard. The point of contention was the seminary, which was still being run along a Josephinist model. It resembled an army barracks: impersonal and with mildest external requirements. In that atmosphere, there was little opportunity to develop a spiritual identity and religious zeal. Even those who showed little interest in religion were accepted, provided they were the son of a priest. Such a system turned out loyal functionaries in the Josephinist model, but was hard pressed to produce zealous churchmen.

            The “Romans” began publishing articles in Ruskiy Sion challenging the canons’ monopoly over ecclesiastical sinecures. They suggested that chaplaincies to the prison or the women’s institute be given to a priest willing to help Dolnytsky to carry out more frequent confessions of the seminarians. Near the end of 1880, one of the seminary prefects, Alexander Malyniak, published in Ruskiy Sion an article entitled “Reflections of a Roman.” In it, he mercilessly criticized the spiritual formation of the younger generations, laity and clerics, and laid the blame before the old guard. The canons demanded Malyniak’s head. He was dismissed as prefect and Metropolitan Yosyf ordered Sion to be closed down.

            The silencing of the voice of the reformers caused alarm bells to ring in Rome, and Propaganda admonished the Metropolitan to maintain a pro-Catholic publication. At the same moment, the Moscophiles launched a press offensive and lobbied for a village to leave the Greek-Catholic fold and embrace Orthodoxy. Something had to be done before all the Ruthenians were lost. Sylvester and Dolnytsky suggested that the Basilian Order be reformed to turn it into a counterweight to the evils of the age, and Sylvester lobbied Rome to appoint him to carry out the reform or at least to implement an earlier plan by his uncle. But another project had been conceived by the Polish Jesuits, initially aimed at restoring Catholicism in the Kholm Eparchy. Jesuit provincial superior Henryk Jackowski convinced Basilian provincial superior Klymentiy Sarnytsky to sign on to his plan. With Sarnytsky on board, Jackowski convinced Propaganda Fide which convinced Pope Leo XIII to impose a Jesuit reform of the Ruthenian monastics.

            Jackowski was not seeking to Polonize the Basilians but rather to discipline and Catholicize them. As a Jesuit, he held Ultramontane views, the goals of which did not coincide with a polonizing agenda of his fellow countrymen. Jackowski’s plan was to create something akin to Eastern-Rite Jesuits which would be capable of re-Catholicizing the Ruthenians and work for the “conversion” of Russia to the Catholic Faith. For this purpose, Propaganda had asked Bishop Sylvester for a list of Jesuits of Ruthenian or Russian nationality, suitable for the task. 

When the papal bull Singulare presidium was made public alarm bells went off in Ruthenian society. All factions, Old Ruthenophiles, Moscophiles, Ukrainophiles, saw the Basilian reform as another step toward assimilation by the Poles. Even the “Romans” were surprised and a little dismayed. While pledging loyalty to the papal decision, they suggested that ethnic Poles be excluded from the Jesuit venture. The Saint George Party recognized the challenge to its power and so Metropolitan Yosyf published a pastoral letter criticizing this reform of a Ruthenian national institution by outsiders. This was the last straw for the governing Poles, who demanded not only Malynovsky’s head but also the Metropolitan’s.

In announcing his resignation to the assembled chapter, Yosyf Sembratovych admonished the canons that the good of Ruthenian society could only be achieved by fidelity to the Pope. Then he quietly departed for Rome and handed the administration of the Archeparchy over to his nephew, Sylvester. In December 1882, Sion wrote that “the resignation of Metropolitan Yosyf is a major event in our history, one which we are as yet unequipped to evaluate.” Even in exile, Yosyf continued to cast a shadow over Sylvester’s administration. The latter would be financially hampered by the substantial pension due the emeritus metropolitan, who was destined outlive his nephew by two years. Malynovsky also retired to the Stavropigian Institute but not before penning an apologia defending his fidelity to Catholicism and blaming the Poles for what had occurred.

 

Sylvester as Administrator

Hitherto, Sylvester Sembratovych had not been very forceful nor had he achieved much success in promoting reform under his uncle. No wonder that neither Rome, Vienna, nor the Poles were enthusiastic about entrusting him with the Greek-Catholic primatial see. For that reason, he was appointed interim administrator to implement basic reforms, while the selection of an archbishop-metropolitan was deferred.

One of the first reforms, already on the agenda since 1850, was to divide the vast Lviv Archeparchy in two, by creating a third Greek-Catholic Eparchy in Stanyslaviv. The scholarly Yulian Pelesh was relieved of the seminary rectorship in Vienna to head the Lviv Chapter. For a time, Vienna thought of moving Sylvester to Stanyslaviv and the more talented and respected Pelesh to Lviv. 

In the meantime, Bishop Sylvester showed himself to have been a competent administrator and faithful executor of Rome and Vienna’s orders. His strategy was simple: he couldn’t fight the Poles and the Moscophiles at the same time. As long as the Poles did not perceive him as a danger, he could concentrate on marginalizing Moscophile influence and improving the spiritual, social, and economic position of his people. In taking this line, he would come also into conflict with the emerging Ukrainophiles.

Sylvester started off on the wrong foot in the eyes of Ruthenian society because he had taken the place of his uncle, who was beloved for having made a public stand for national rights. But the Church had problems with more than one national faction: although Russophiles were politically conservative they were becoming increasingly pro-Russian and pro-Orthodox; Ukrainophiles, on the other hand, were ideological liberals and gravitated toward anticlericalism and even socialist radicalism. 

            After three years as administrator, Rome and Vienna were convinced that Sylvester could deliver: he had begun seminary reforms and laid plans for a new building; he practiced political moderation and sought détente with the ruling Poles; he founded a newspaper that promoted moderate politics and Catholicism; he began the reform of the Basilian Sisters and religious education. Dolnytsky lobbied to have him confirmed as Metropolitan, to continue these reforms. In 1885, Sylvester was duly enthroned as metropolitan-archbishop and Pelesh was appointed bishop of Stanyslaviv.

 

A New Era as Metropolitan-Archbishop

Sembratovych’s administration can be characterized by détente in external policy (with the ruling Galician Poles) and active defence of Ruthenian causes in internal policy. Amid Polish complaints to Rome, he and Dolnytsky vigorously defended the use of three-barred crosses as proper to the Ruthenian Church. He showed tremendous strength of character when Propaganda second guessed him by siding with an influential Polish landowner in the case of a patronage appointment of a parish priest. The Metropolitan demonstrated courage by threatening to resign if his decision was not upheld. He also spent a significant portion of his life performing canonical visitations of the churches and chapels of the Lviv archeparchy, which numbered over a million souls. During these visits he listened first-hand to the joys and sorrows of his clergy and faithful. At least one of the deaneries had not received an episcopal visitation in 60 years. 

Although Metropolitan Sylvester’s conservative policy of loyalty to Pope and Emperor have brought peace to his Church, it lost him the love of the patriots. The National Populists, who had initially supported him, boycotted his enthronement. In 1885, he made an unpopular move un running a separate slate of Catholic-minded candidates for the Galician diet, which divided the Ruthenian vote. 

In 1890, he convinced Catholic-minded deputies to establish a coalition with Catholic-minded Poles in the Galicia Diet, known as the “New Era.” This coalition was perceived as pro-Polish and thus rejected by Russophiles and Ukrainophiles, which identified the Poles as the common enemy. Sembratovych had thought that a truce with the Poles would achieve equality for Ruthenians but the Polish side was only prepared to concede the minimum, never anything approaching equality. The truce lasted a mere four years and, of all his initiatives, the it was the one that most damaged his reputation among his own.

The establishment of Stanyslaviv brought the number of Greek-Catholic eparchies to the required three for holding a provincial synod. The 1891 Lviv Synod was a success in that it solidified much needed church reforms into law. But it touched upon an issue that become another national battleground: clerical celibacy. The church hierarchy needed to increase the percentage of celibate secular clergy, to increase the number of eligible candidates for the episcopacy and for missionary work in Europe and the Americas. Most national leaders were the offspring of priests, and the civically-active married priest was considered a national institution. An attempt to recommend celibacy was taken to be another attack on the nation. Sylvester took a moderate stance but his image suffered greatly, and he was blamed for the pro-celibacy wording subsequently redacted into the synod’s decrees by Propaganda.

 In 1893, a group of Moscophile university students in Vienna (including a couple of seminarians) hurled eggs and heckled him as a sell-out to Rome. When the Ruthenian seminary in Vienna was closed, Moscophiles saw it more as a political move rather than as part if a larger plan. Sylvester had, in fact, sacrificed the troubled Vienna college in exchange for two new seminaries in Peremyshl and Stanyslaviv, as well as a the possibility of an additional minor seminary in Lviv, and more stipends to send seminarians to Rome. His efforts in that regard led, in 1894, to the allocation of ten places for Ruthenians at the Greek College. This project was expanded, in 1896, with the creation of an entirely separate Pontifical Ruthenian College, inaugurated during the last year of Sylvester’s life.

            On the surface, Metropolitan Sylvester had placed in check the most dangerous elements to the peace and wellbeing of Habsburg rule over the Galician Ruthenians. Mindful of the strength of Russian propaganda directed at them, Vienna wanted to make a gesture to show benevolence toward the Ruthenians. The occasion that presented itself was the three-hundredth anniversary of Union of Brest. Accordingly, in 1895, Emperor Franz Joseph proposed that the Pope bestow the high dignity of cardinal upon the Lviv Metropolitan. 

Sylvester led a Ruthenian pilgrimage to Rome, and the Emperor participated by conferring the cardinatial beretta, as per sovereign privilege. Nevertheless, instead of a mark of favour for the Ruthenians, Ukrainiophiles and Moscophiles viewed the honour as a personal gift for having sold out to Rome and the Poles. The ceremonies of the new cardinal’s receptions represented everything National Populists, Moscophiles, and Socialists despised: the ostensibly peaceful collaboration of throne and altar, Ruthenians and Poles, Greeks and Latins, all under the benevolent rule of Caesar and his aristocratic counsellors. The paternalistic figure of a benevolent prince of the Church might have appealed to the peasant population but it was anathema to an increasingly radical nationalist intelligentsia.

 

Sylvester and the Americas          

Mainstream history has ignored Sylvester Sembratovych’s role in sending the first Ukrainian clergy to the Americas: to the United States, Canada, and also to Brazil. In order provide such missionaries, he was forced to battle fierce opposition from American Catholic hierarchs and clergy. Undeterred, he also waged a diplomatic struggle with Vatican authorities over the right of the Greek-Catholic Church provide pastoral care for its own faithful, wherever in the world they chose to settle.

Ruthenian-Ukrainian immigration to the Americas began in the 1870s, during the reign of his uncle Yosyf. But the first request for a missionary priest dates from Sylvester’s term as apostolic administrator of Lviv. On 16 July 1884, the faithful of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, wrote to ask him, as the head of their Church, for a priest of their own rite and language. After conferring with the Eparch of Peremyshl, he dispached Reverend Ivan Voliansky, from the latter eparchy, to minister to the community of about 3,000 souls. Over a period of four years, Voliansky established Greek-Catholic communities and built churches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Minnesota. In 1887, Sembratovych sent another priest to replace him, but the latter died a few months after his arrival. Two more priests were sent in 1888 and others went without permission. 

Metropolitan Sylvester had ordered Father Voliansky to present himself to the local Catholic bishop, upon arrival in the new land. But as arrived with his wife and children, Archbishop Ryan banned Voliansky from serving in the archdiocese of Philadelphia. Voliansky telegraphed Lviv that he was starting his mission under Metropolitan Sylvester’s jurisdiction. The missionary argued that the situation was urgent and of necessity, since most Greek-Catholics had not received the Sacraments for years. The frosty reception that American hierarchs gave Greek-Catholic missionaries impeded cooperation, and gave rise to a conflict over ecclesiastical jurisdiction unintended by the Archbishop of Lviv. 

In 1885, as yet no canonical prohibition existed against married clergy ministering in the Americas. Nevertheless, American Roman Catholics were scandalized by the idea, and their bishops were concerned that Latin clergy would become demoralized if Rome permitted parallel clerical disciplines in the same territory. Although Archbishop Ryan asked for a celibate priest or widower, he admitted to Propaganda Fide that it was possible for Voliansky to minister with faculties from his home bishop. 

Sylvester Sembratovych attempted to resolve jurisdictional conflict. He had instructed each of his priests to submit to the local bishop, but those bishops rejected them. He also wrote to the American hierarchs but received no reply, while the Americans complained directly to Rome. Sylvester argued that he was acting within his rights by providing provisory pastoral care for his own faithful. Yet the Americans misunderstood him to be claiming direct jurisdiction over the immigrants. 

The American bishops strategy was aimed at forcing the recall of the missionaries, so that Greek-Catholics would  have no choice but to assimilate to the Latin Rite. The hierarchs were under the mistaken impression that “the pope wants to reconcile all rites into one” and assumed that the imigrants would abandon their old ways once they assimilated to the new culture. After their meeting Baltimore in 1888, the bishops informed Rome that it did not want the Byzantine Rite to be permitted in America. 

Those bishops had little knowledge about the Eastern Churches and, in addition, were being misinformed about the number and situation of the immigrants by their own Polish clergy. As a result, they underestimated the danger of the well-funded Russian Orthodox proselytism coming out of San Francisco and New York. They ignored warnings from Lviv that Greek-Catholics might accept a more familiar Orthodox priest over an unfamiliar Roman Catholic, especially a Pole, whom the people perceived to represent the hegemonic system of the old country. 

Sylvester Sembratovych understood the Latins’ objections to married clergy and acted upon it, but was hard pressed to find celibates willing to volunteer for the mission. He asked only that Voliansky be recognized temporarily until a celibate or widower could be recruited. Several widowers were displaced by the end of the decade. But the American hierarchs continued to complain, failing to distinguish between the Galician clergy, under Sembratovych’s jurisdiction, and more numerous married priests that were arriving from Hungary (mainly Carpatho-Rusyns).

In response to American complaints, on 1 October 1890, Propaganda Fide issued a decree entitled Aliquibus abhinc annis. By this decree married clergy were thenceforth prohibited from serving in North America, and each missionary priest required prior approval from Rome and from the Latin bishop of the community to which they were destined. In addition, all married clergy in America were to be recalled.

Metropolitan Sylvester attempted to comply. He published a notice soliciting volunteers, but no celibates were forthcoming. At the end of 1891, Bishop Firczak of Užhorod proposed the appointment of a vicar apostolic (exarch) to coordinate the mission and combat growing Russian Orthodox proselytism. The following year, Sembratovych followed with an identical request. However, in December 1892, Propaganda rejected their petitions.The Congregation continued to issue decrees in 1894 and 1897, but they all failed to provide effective pastoral ministry. One of “the Romans,” Sembratovych’s sometime procurator to the Holy See, Canon Martyn Pakish, remarked to Propaganda that “150,000 people deserve more effort for their eternal salvation.”

            Rather than providing a solution, Propaganda’s decrees handicapped the mission. In their correspondence with Rome, the American bishops cited the optimistic but erroneous appraisals of their own clergy, who had contact with a mere fraction of the settlers. The bishops assumed that Ruthenian-Ukrainians would assimilate to the Latin Rite but, instead, tens of thousands embraced Russian Orthodoxy. This colossal pastoral failure also represented a political danger for Austria-Hungary, as the defectors encouraged their families and friends back home to follow in their footsteps. As Propaganda would not facilitate, Austria-Hungary began to insist that more Greek-Catholic missionaries be sent. 

 

Sylvester’s Last Stand

            In the penultimate year of Sylvester Sembratovych’s life, a major development occurred in the missions. In 1897, Ukrainian immigrants to Brazil and Canada began requesting their own priests. Propaganda’s decree of that same year, Romana Ecclesia charitate, told Latin bishops to provide missionaries of their own rite to Eastern Catholic settlers. Accordingly, on 12 February 1897, Bishop Vital Grandin of Saint Albert (Edmonton) made such a request. With Ukrainian immigration increasing in tandem with Russian Orthodox proselytism, a second request followed from Grandin’s coadjutor, Bishop Legal. Propaganda instructed the Canadian hierarchs to approach Sembratovych directly and the latter sent Fathers Nestor Dmytriv and Pavlo Tymkevych to the British Dominion of Canada, in March and November respectively.

            In March 1897, Cardinal Sembratovych’s strength began to fail. Unknown to him, he had developed stomach cancer. He returned sick to Lviv at the end of June, following a pastoral visitation of 28 churches and chapels in the Berezhany deanery. The doctors told him he had “catarrh of the stomach” and ordered him to rest at his country estate at Pidliute.

            At this juncture, the tone of Sembratovych’s letters to Rome changed dramatically. In sickness, he began to evaluate his life: what he had done and especially what he failed to do. Hitherto his messages had been full of Roman-style obsequiousness; now the tone of correspondence became strong, unembeleshed, and to the point. In particular, the lack of pastoral care in North America was disturbing the peace of his conscience. And this issue led to a contentious altercation between him and the Polish cardinal, who had come to the helm of Propaganda in 1892, Mieczysław Ledóchowski.

            Cardinal Sylvester began the conversation irenically on 26 June 1897, one could almost say in a “Roman” way, one where exceptions to the rule are not uncommon, with a little negotiation. In responding to complaints from Propaganda about the clergy sent to Brazil and Canada, Sylvester answered that he had “forgotten” about the earlier decrees. Those had been addressed to the bishops collectively, but he had adhered instead to instructions addressed to him specifically. Then Sylvester came to the crux of the matter: It was providential that he had forgotten those decrees for, otherwise, the Ruthenian faithful would have left the Church. The implication was that the Congregation’s rules were more of a hindrance than a help in maintaining the immigrants in the fold.

            The Congregation refused to grant concessions, which caused Sylvester to harden his tone. On 27 November 1897, he wrote a strongly worded letter to express his displeasure and to argue his point. The Lviv Cardinal explained that the decrees had not provided the necessary pastoral care. To remedy this, he had dispatched priests which Rome had subsequently outlawed. Sembratovych argued that, in doing so, Propaganda was going against the intentions of the Pope himself who, in his 1894 encyclical Orientalium dignitas ecclesiarum, had prohibited Latin clergy from attempting to draw the Easterners to the Latin Rite.

Sembratovych asserted that the facts demonstrated the opposite of Ledóchowski’s claim that the faithful were sufficiently provided for (by Latin priests). That more had not embraced Orthodoxy was due only the efforts of a single Ruthenian priest (Voliansky), which Rome attempted to ban. In an exasperated tone, Sylvester said that he had raised his voice many times and if his advice was not heeded, the remaining faithful in America would leave the Catholic Communion. In that event, Propaganda Fide would be solely responsible for the outcome.

Ledóchowski responded by assuring Sembratovych that Propaganda had always faithfully interpreted the Pope. He identified the problem in the disobedience of the Ruthenian missionaries. He then cited the decrees and erroneous reports that the faithful were being sufficiently served. The Polish cardinal turned the tables by shifting the blame from his own obstructionism to the a lack of faith among the Ruthenians, citing Gregory XVI’s lament regarding their defection to Orthodoxy in Podlachia.

In the 1830s following one of several Polish rebellions, the Russian Empire violently suppressed the Uniate Church in Podlachia (followed by Kholm in 1875). Although these defections were procured by force, they gave Polish elites a pretext to argue that Uniate Catholicism was a failure. The proof was that the Latin-Rite faithful did not embrace Orthodoxy. The argument was that, if the Ruthenians had passed to the Latin Rite, their Catholicism would have been more difficult to dislodge.

Cardinal Sylvester’s reply to Ledóchowski, dated 4 January 1898, was even more frank. He began by strategically affirming that he did not reject Propaganda’s latest instructions. But he qualified this by noting that they were not being observed by the American bishops, particularly lamentable at a time when Pope Leo XIII was trying to preserve the Eastern Catholic Churches. In this letter, he singled out the Bishop of Saint Albert, Canada, as the only one who had requested a Greek-Catholic priest. 

Sembratovych blamed the defections on Russian propaganda and promised to send his new Roman procurator, Father Vasyl Levytsky, to provide details. Then he turned the argument back on Ledóchowski: knowing the strength and effects of Russian propaganda, his own conscience did not allow him to comfort himself with words of Gregory XVI, as if the defections happened merely due to external machinations. Here Sylvester was making a double allusion: firstly, that he had followed his conscience in sending priests; and secondly, that Ledóchowski was seeking to justify his inadequate measures by shifting the blame to others. Cardinal Sylvester was saying that he did not really accept Propaganda’s sollution and informed Ledóchowski that he would be going over his head and appealing directly to Pope Leo.

After a two month pause, Father Dolnytsky wrote to Propaganda, perhaps to mediate between the sparring cardinals. He told Ledóchowski that Sembratovych was extremely concerned about his faithful in the Americas. As Ledóchowski had minimized the danger of Russian proselytism, Dolnytsky mentioned a letter from the Galician Viceroy, Prince Sanguszko, asking Sembratovych to intervene against of Russian proselytism by sending priests to Canada. At first, Dolnytsky presented the conundrum diplomatically by stating that Sembratovych did not want to compromise Propaganda. But then he allowed the veil of diplomacy to fall. At the end of his letter, when stating that Propaganda “is not favourable to Ruthenian priests in America.” A few days later, the Lviv Cardinal sent his own letter informing Ledóchowski of Sanguszko’s official request for missionaries, and requesting advice on how to respond.

On 12 March 1898, Ledóchowski fell back on his habitual defence of Propaganda’s circulars and decrees which “are recognized for their wisdom and usefulness” [by whom?]. Sembratovych was advised to send copies to the Viceroy, to show how much Propaganda had done to favour Ruthenians “excepting only the jurisdiction of the [local] bishops.” Once again, Ledóchowski deflected responsibility from “ecclesiastical superiors”  to “the evils of men.” Sembratovych responded seventeen days later: “You ask me to reflect on apostasy as being the result of bad will but I also hold that it comes from a lack of shepherds’ care. In order not to be guilty of that, I am considering every way to provide [for the flock].”

In May 1898, Ledóchowski sent Sembratovych the results of soundings by the papal delegate in Washington D.C. Once again, the American bishops underestimated the numbers of Ruthenians in their dioceses and claimed the defections had been fewer than reported. Archbishop John Ireland of Saint Paul, Minnesota, made the ludicrous claim that only thirty-five families in Minneapolis had converted to Orthodoxy. In doing so, Ireland was unknowingly preparing his own place in history’s annals.

Unexpectedly, in July 1898, an eyewitness arrived in Lviv. Nikolai Tolstoy was a Russian priest who had converted to Catholicism a few years previously and had served as a Russian Orthodox misisonary in the United States. Now he sought to be deputized to return to America, in order spearhead a mission to reverse the defections among the Greek-Catholic settlers. Sembratovych was already in his last agony and could not receive Tolstoy. But during a lucid moment, Dolnytsky obtained the cardinal’s blessing for the venture. In a letter of 22 July, Dolnytsky wrote Ledóchowski asking him to approve that mission and informing him that Tolstoy had reported many as half a million Ruthenians had settled in the United States.

In the second half of Dolnytsky’s letter, he touched upon the quarrel between the two cardinals, to which he had been privy as a close collaborator of Sylvester. Dolnytsky wrote that, in last letter, Ledóchowski had “ attacked [Sembratovych] indirectly, as if he had usurped jurisdiction in America.” The Lviv spiritual director countered that it was the missionaries themselves who, under the circumstances, claimed to have jurisdiction, as Sembratovych had clearly instructed each of them to submit to the Latin ordinaries. Finally, Dolnytsky revealed that this quarrel had haunted Sylvester up to his final moments: “He tried to read your letter but good fortune disposed that he was to weak to understand it.”

Tolstoy waited in vain to be sent back to America, and further research is required to determine whether or not Cardinal Sylvester made good on his threat to intervene directly with Pope Leo.

 

Successor and Legacy

            It is impossible to know for certain to what extent the feud with Ledóchowski and worry over the immigrants contributed to Sylvester Sembratovych’s death. It is likely that both played a role, if only in determining the time of his demise. He had already been incapacitated from almost half a year, from June 1897 until January 1898, but then recovered, “miraculously.” The recovery, however, did not endure.

            In February 1898, Dolnytsky told Propaganda that Sembratovych needed an auxiliary bishop but was reluctant to ask, perhaps (he guessed) in denial about the real state of his health. By June the cardinal’s health had again deteriorated and he was forced to hold meetings from his archiepiscopal palace. On 18 June, less than two months before his death, Sembratovych wrote to Ledóchowski for an auxiliary bishop, who could carry out physical responsibilities such as ordinations and visitations. As candidates, he suggested four canons from his chapter (Biletsky, Turkevych, Chapelsky) but emphasized that he was leaving the choice entirely to Rome. He only asked that it fall upon someone who was willing to completely sacrifice themselves for the good of the Church. 

            There were only two provisos to his request: the first that the choice not fall on young Basilian hieromonk Sheptytsky, and the second that it not go to the cathedral pastor, Canon Martyn Pakish, who had been procurator in Rome. Sembratovych suggested that Pakish was too weak and gravitated to whichever party or opinion allowed him the greatest ease (something which has been reputed unjustly to Sembratovych himself). The reasons for excluding Sheptytsky were more complicated. 

            Andrey Sheptytsky had already been mentioned as a candidate for bishop of Peremyshl in 1896, but he was considered too vital to the success of the on-going reform of the Basilian Order. Cardinal Sylvester was aware that Sheptytsky was destined for high office, and perhaps even to succeed him. This is why he asked Ledóchowski to “leave him aside for the moment” but “save him for a more opportune time.” For now, Sheptytsky was still too “young and immature.” But there was a more important reason: Sheptytsky was “not well regarded by Ruthenians, and there could be protests which would paralyze his and my activities.” The National Populists had been suspicious of the “Polish count,” since the day he entered the monastery in 1887. In the press, they accused him of being a trojan horse, sent to steer their Church along a Polish agenda. Cardinal Sembratovych did not want the rift to widen between the Church and Ruthenian-Ukrainian society, which had developped under his watch.

            In the end Propaganda rejected all three canons proposed by the dying cardinal, because the Lviv Synod had excluded widowers from the episcopacy. Perhaps Sylvester had thought he could achieve a final compromise alla Romana, as he had done in Peremyshl in 1896. On that occasion, he “forgot” to mention that Konstantyn Chekhovych was himself a widower. An exception was unknowingly made and the candidate was appointed.

            By the end of July, Sylvester was dying and was unable to engage with Ledóchowski about an auxiliary. He had confided to Dolnytsky, who believed that he had left the choice to Rome so as not to hurt one of the candidates. Izydor Dolnytsky’s letter of on 22 July was the last communication Rome would receive during Sylvester’s lifetime. In addition to the Americas, in his last days the Lviv cardinal turned his mind to another piece of unfinished work, the restoration of the church in his native village of Doshnytsia in the Lemko region. Sylvester fulfilled this vow, as the church was finished on the day of his death. But he could not fulfil his promise to perform the blessing of the completed temple. On 4 August 1898, the head of the Lviv Chapter, Canon Andrey Biletsky, telegraphed Propaganda Fide that Sembratovych had died that afternoon. 

Cardinal Sylvester’s funeral was held four days later; its ceremonial resembled the honours rendered when he had returned from Rome after receiving the cardinatial dignity. All three Rites, Greek, Latin, and Armenian, participated. The death toll rang out from all the churches in Lviv. Roman and Armenian Cathedrals held their own requiem Masses and their bishops celebrated requiems at side altars in Saint George’s Archcathedral. Ecclesiastical, provincial and national dignitaries and the military attended the grand Byzantine requiem celebrated by Bishop Chekhovych. Ruthenian-Ukrainian and Polish confraternities, brotherhoods, university officials, the mayor and city council, were all represented in the funeral procession, as well as seminary staff and students and religious orders: reformed Basilians, Basilian Nuns, and the recently-founded Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate.        

 

A Place in History

Sylvester Sembratovych the sell-out was a caricature created by Ruthenian-Ukrainian factions seeking a convenient scapegoat for their own failures. But now it is time to hear a different side of the story, sentire et altera pars, told from hitherto neglected sources, in Sylvester’s own words and in those of his closest collaborators.

A century after his death, the figure of Sylvester Sembratovych was rediscovered and rehabilitated by John-Paul Himka in his publication, Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine 1867–1900. Himka identifies some of his “exceptional achievements:” the creation of a new eparchy in Stanyslaviv, the Lviv Synod, the construction of a new seminary, liturgical reform. I would add: the reform of the Basilian Nuns, the birth of a second female religious order (SSMI), the creation of a college-seminary in Rome exclusively for Ruthenians, the rare honour of the cardinalate which gave a voice to Ruthenian-Ukrainians as well as Greek-Catholics in the Roman Curia. And no longer can we overlook his vigorous advocacy for emigrants and the rights of the Eastern Churches to minister to their faithful anywhere in the world.

The hallmarks of Sylvester’s policy were: cooperation of church and state and cooperation between Catholics of Particular Churches and Rites. He believed in détente but only to a point, as a means but not an end. And when the point could not be achieved, as we have seen here, he was most certainly willing and able to fight for Ukrainian Greek-Catholic interests against all manner of foe. His policies became very unpopular in the context of Polish-Ukrainian rivalry over Eastern Galicia, and his popular successor, Andrey Sheptytsky, criticized him in that regard. But his res gestae can now be re-examined afresh in a less politically-charged context, from ethical perspectives (rather than moral ones, which are not proper to history), as well from their intended ends rather than contingent means.

Few of his fellow “Romans” were destined for glory and Sylvester was the first among them to reach high office. One was suspended, one left the Catholic Church, Dolnytsky and Pakish were passed over for the episcopacy (although both were named papal monsignors). In the early twentieth century, Bishops Kotsylovsky, Charnetsky, and Buchko represented a new cadre of bishops that had graduated from the Ruthenian College established due to Sylvester's efforts.

Though despised by Kost Levytsky, airbrushed out by Rudnytsky, ignored by Subtelny and Magocsi, disinterred finally by Sereda and Himka, Sylvester Sembratovych must resume his place in the historical pantheon, neither as a moral hero nor a villain, but as a significant figure to Eastern-Catholic and Ukrainian history in Europe as well as North and South America.