Coventry Ukrainian Catholic Church at 60

Timeline by Bohdan Mandziuk

It has been a very traumatic year for Ukrainians worldwide. A number of celebratory events had to be postponed after Russia’s war in Ukraine intensified, in February. Communities and organizations across the globe focused on aid to Ukraine and welcoming refugees. Some were still able to commemorate significant milestones in their histories. A stained-glass window remembering Ukrainian-Canadian servicemen and women in Britain was hallowed at St. James's, Sussex Gardens, in London, on 8 May 2022. As well, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Bradford marked their 70th anniversary. Today, I discovered that St. Volodymyr’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Coventry is also marking their  60th on Sunday, 31 July. As a tribute to my dear friends from that community, I thought to compose a brief history of this church, taken mainly from my manuscript of the History of UGCC in Britain “This Family in Exile”, which is currently in editing.

Following the Second World War, 30,000 Ukrainian Displaced Persons immigrated to the United Kingdom and were settled in 500 towns, cities, refugee and workers' camps across the country. About two-thirds were Greek-Catholics from Western Ukraine (Galicia). Church authorities dispatched missionary clergy to serve the scattered flock and Bishop Ivan Buchko (Archbishop from 1953) was given jurisdiction over them, as well as all Ukrainian DPs in Europe.

As the refugees were scattered in hundreds of settlements, the clergy had to set up missionary bases, from which they could travel to the surrounding settlements. Six pastoral zones were established at the end of 1947, each served by two priests. They were re-divided into seven zones in May 1949. At first, Coventry was served from Ely because a larger number of refugees were located in camps and hostels in Cambridgeshire. The first priest to serve that area was Father Josaphat Jean. In a letter to Archbishop Godfrey of 22 August 1947, he mentioned Coventry among the places where the faithful were located. Jean was assisted by Father Modeste Gnesko, in the Summer of 1948, and then by Father Petro Diachyshyn, who visited Coventry and 26 camps and hostels, from March to April 1949.

With the arrival of more clergy, the pastoral zones were modified again in August 1949. Father Emanuil Korduba was transferred to Coventry, which was quickly becoming a Ukrainian centre. He was given charge over Essex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire. Korduba was assisted by Father Yuriy Spolitakevych. When hostels in Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex were closed, two priests were no longer needed in the area. In September 1950, Korduba was transferred to Manchester. Spolitakevych and Diachyshyn volunteered for a mission in Australia, and newly-ordained Father Mykola Matychak was sent to Coventry in January 1952. Matychak changed his base to Wolverhampton in 1953 and was assisted in Coventry by Father Petro Lisovsky. In November 1954, Father Stefan Vivcharuk, who had been serving in Paris, took over the Coventry pastoral zone but made his base in Birmingham. Four years later, some of his territory was included in a new Bedford pastorate, assigned to Father Ivan Hasiak. For three months in 1959, Father Alexander Baran assisted Vivcharuk while waiting to emigrate to Canada. Father Volodymyr Dzioba replaced Vivcharuk in December 1962, when the former was appointed chancellor.

          

Archbishop Buchko, Coventry 1956

In the 1950s and 1960s, Ukrainian religious leaders visited Coventry: Mitrat Malynovsky assisted with Lenten Confessions in March 1951. Archbishop Buchko made a first brief stop to Coventry on 18 July 1952, and a solemn visitation was organized in July 1956. After the formation of the Apostolic Exarchate, the new Vicar General, Paul Maluga, visited and preached a mission from 13 to 16 March 1958. Bishop Augustine Hornyak visited in 1962, 1965, 1969. Missions for the twentieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries of UGCC in Britain were preached by Basilian Fathers Maksym Markiv, on 22 May 1967, and by Athanasius Pekar, on 25 November 1972. The most important visit to the congregation occurred on 22 May 1970, when Cardinal Slipyi (known as Patriarch Yosyf from 1975) visited and celebrated the Divine Liturgy.

Ukrainian Catholics in Coventry first worshipped at Christ the King RC church in Coundon. In 1948, Canon Raymond Walsh welcomed them to Saint Elizabeth RC church. After his appointment, the lively Father Vivcharuk began looking for a larger building for worship. In January 1956, he acquired a new domivka: a church residence and national home at 482 Foleshill Road. This building was blessed and opened by Archbishop Buchko in July.

Vivcharuk’s ambitious projects were aided by Vicar General Maluga. At a meeting in February 1961, Maluga told the assembled clergy that they needed to increase collections in order to acquire new church buildings in Nottingham, Coventry, and Bolton. In August of the same year, Cardinal William Godfrey, the first apostolic Exarch for Ukrainians, made a token monetary contribution toward the purchase of a temporary church for Coventry.

In July 1961, Father Vivcharuk acquired land at Broad Street and Stony-Stanton Road complete with an old wooden Methodist hall. The first church house was sold while the Methodist hall was repaired and turned it into a “temporary” church, until the congregation could raise funds to build a new structure. The church, rechristened Saint Volodymyr the Great, was blessed by Bishop Hornyak on in March 1962. At the same time, a mosaic icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour was installed Saint Elizabeth’s, bearing the inscription: “Gift from Ukrainians of Coventry in thanksgiving for use of Church of St. Elizabeth 1948–1962.” A plan to build a new church in the Hutsul style (Vivcharuk was a Hutsul) was never brought to completion.

            In the 1950s, Coventry became one of most vibrant Ukrainian communities in Britain. The Ukrainian Catholic congregation, numbering 700, began to increase as Ukrainians from Wales and Northern England settled in town. In 1953, the first branch of Brotherhood of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour (OLPS) was established by visiting Redemptorist missionary, Bohdan Kurylas. Members of this confraternity undertook to care for the church and clergy residences, and also took part in church singing and carolling. In the 1950s, other chapters were set up in larger centres, such as Edinburgh and Bradford, due to the efforts of energetic pastors. With the arrival of Father Maluga, the brotherhood became active in organizing church events. Coventry OLPS hosted a reception for the parish praznyk of the Protection of the Mother of God, on Sunday, 18 October 1959. During Maluga’s tenure, Coventry was considered one of the most vibrant branches.

Coventry’s other Ukrainian organizations were also very active. Among these were: a male Choir, Verkhovyna, under the direction of Marian Kostiuk (1926-2000), which performed across the country; drama and dance troops; and a Saturday school, with qualified teachers. Kostiuk’s choir sang the responses at a Divine Liturgy on 24 May 1959, at the Ukrainian church in Saffron Hill, London, in the presence of Exarch Godfrey. They also sang at a commemorate concert in Godfrey’s honour, held at Westminster Cathedral Hall. Verkhovyna sang the Divine Liturgy celebrated at the Lourdes Grotto of Hednesford Shrine, during the annual Ukrainian pilgrimage in July 1961. Over a thousand Ukrainians attended. On 30 June 1968, the choir led one of the Divine Liturgies during the opening ceremonies of the Cathedral of the Holy Family in Exile. Kostiuk emigrated to Australia in 1975, where he continued to establish and work with Ukrainian community choirs.

Cardinal Slipyi, Coventry, 22 May 1970

The Vatican and Events in Soviet Ukraine

Next month, I will be presenting an overview on post 1939 Vatican sources pertaining the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, in a conference organized by the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Much of this information comes from a book I am publishing about Metropolitan Sheptytsky and from recently opened archives.

During the Second World War, the Holy See (the Vatican) struggled to obtain reliable information about the situation of the local Churches in war-torn Europe. This was particularly difficult in areas under the control of Soviet forces, which did not permit communication with the rest of the world.

  Soon after the Nazis and Soviets partitioned Poland, in September 1939, rumours began circulating in the west that Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, Greek-Catholic primate and Archbishop of Lviv-Halych, had been arrested, deported, or killed by the Soviet invaders. Indeed, Sheptytsky himself had been expecting such a scenario, since the Imperial Russian authorities had deported and imprisoned him in 1914. But no such orders were issued, neither in September 1939 nor when the Soviets returned to Lviv in the summer of 1944, following a German interregnum. Kyr Andrey’s moral authority had become too great and Stalin preferred to wait for his imminent demise before setting in motion his plans to suppress and merge the Greek-Catholic Church with his own state-controlled entity, staffed (especially in Ukraine) by clerics working for the Soviet secret services.

            Having endured most of the Second World War, following a long and painful illness, Metropolitan Andrey finally succumbed on 1 November 1944. His brother, Hieromonk Klymentiy, wrote a note to their other brother, General Stanisław, which read: “This very day, at a quarter-to-two in the afternoon, our dear Metropolitan fell asleep in the Lord.” Four days later, news of the venerable prelate’s death was already appearing in the European press, and the Polish Ambassador to the Holy See informed the Papal Secretariat of State of the fact on 12 November. A brief notice was published on the front page of the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano on 14 November followed, the next day, by a longer panegyric containing laudatory declarations from the Cabinet of Ministers of the Polish Government in London. The Government-in-Exile also ordered a solemn requiem Mass to be said by the Polish Military Ordinary on 2 December, at the Church of Saint Stanislaw in Rome.

Confirmation of Sheptytsky’s death from Lviv was not forthcoming for three months. On 6 March 1945, a letter arrived from Sheptytsky’s successor, Metropolitan Yosyf Slipyi, addressed to Pope Pius XII and dated 19 November 1944. Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, head of the Congregation for the Eastern Church (Oriental Congregation), presented the letter to the Pope when he was next received in audience, on 10 March.

News of Slipyi’s succession presented a problem for the Vatican. According to the Concordat between the Holy See and the Second Polish Republic, episcopal appointments required a nihil obstat from the Polish President. But Slipyi had been appointed secretly as coadjutor-successor to Sheptytsky in November 1939, shortly after the Soviet takeover. The Vatican foreign ministry (a section of the Secretariat of State) chose to keep the appointment secret until the end of the war, in order to avoid an inevitable clash with the exiled government. After news arrived that Slipyi succeeded to the post, this became unavoidable.

Monsignor Domenico Tardini, head of the Vatican foreign office, informed Polish Ambassador Casimir Papée that Yosyf Slipyi had succeeded Andrey Sheptytsky in the primatial Lviv-Halych See. Papée had no choice but to issue a diplomatic protest, but his government was in a precarious position. In July 1945, the United States followed by the Allied Governments gave in to Stalin and transferred diplomatic recognition from London to Lublin, where the Soviet occupiers had set up a supposed coalition which was really a Communist regime. Although Papée tried everything to countermand the appointment, in the end diplomatic notes were exchanged stating that it was an exception to the rule, made under wartime conditions. Rather than the exception, it became the new norm: No further placets would be solicited from London, and the Polish People's Republic declared the concordat to be void.

Unbeknown to either party, three days before the Holy See and the Government-in-exile resolved the theoretical conundrum, the entire Greek-Catholic hierarchy, including Slipyi, was arrested and deported by the Soviet secret police. The first news of their arrest reached the Vatican three months later from a Greek-Catholic priest of Polish origins, Count Piotr Rzewuski (later known as Bronsisław Kreuza). He had been a eyewitness to Sheptytsky’s death and the events that followed. As a Pole, he was permitted to leave Soviet Ukraine on 15 June and immediately made his way to Rome. 

After checking his story with the exiled auxiliary-bishop of Lviv, Ivan Buchko, Cardinal Tisserant informed Pius XII on 11 August 1945. At the audience’s conclusion, the Pope kept the typed agenda (foglio di udienza), containing the details, among his own papers. Tisserant’s second in command, Bishop Antonio Arata, sent official notification to the Secretariat of State on 17 September. A week later, further details arrived, via Bishop Buchko, from five sources that had contact with Ukraine via underground agents. The sources specified the exact date of the hierarchs arrest, 11 April 1945, and confirmed their deportation to Kiev, the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In October, Rzewuski would be allowed to present to the pontiff the homage of the loyal Ukrainian clergy, who had been “deprived of their shepherd.” In December, the Pope issued an encyclical letter, Orientales omnes, decrying their imprisonment only days after the Russian Patriarch issued a call to Greek-Catholics to join his fold (a call which would be implemented by force by the NKVD at a fake synod, the following year).

No concrete news of the Ukrainian Catholic bishops’ condition would be be forthcoming for a decade. False reports were published announcing Slipyi’s demise, the first of these appearing in January 1945 in the British Catholic paper, The Tablet. Following the hierarchs’ condemnation by a Soviet military tribunal, on 3 June 1946, the Holy See assumed that Slipyi had died, and Tardini said as much to the peeved Polish ambassador. It was only after Stalin’s death, and the release of some of the bishops and clergy from the gulag, that news to the contrary reached Vatican City. In January 1954, Buchko (now Archbishop), reported that Slipyi was still alive and in prison. The news prompted an elderly and ailing Pius XII to include Slipyi’s name at the top of hierarchs to which he addrressed his encyclical Novimus nos in May 1956. The following December, he sent a formal apostolic letter to Slipyi on the occasion of the latter’s seventieth birthday, congratulating him on his fidelity. We know that a copy of the papal message reached the imprisoned metropolitan. Pius XII did not live to greet Slipyi upon his arrival in Rome seven years later, in January 1963. Negotiations for the longsuffering prelate’s release were carried out by curial officials of Pius’ successor, Pope John XXIII.

British Pilgrimage to Rome 1969

by Engineer Vasyl Oleskiw (1924–2016)

[Василь Олеськів, “У поклоні Верховнону,” 
in Наша Церква, vol. 18, no. 1 [90] (January–March 1970), p. 7–9.]

           

 On Thursday, 2 October 1969, Ukrainian pilgrims from Great Britain, together with their Bishop Kyr Augustine Hornyak and three parish priests, arrived in Rome for the solemn consecration of the noble Sobor of Saint Sophia. On that day, they experienced perhaps the greatest and most moving moments of their visit to the Eternal City. On that day, at 3:30 in the afternoon, they were received in a private audience by His Beatitude Major-Archbishop Cardinal Yosyf, at the Ukrainian Catholic University of Pope Saint Clement. On that day they had the joy to personally meet with our Chief Hierarch, Confessor of the Faith and of the Ukrainian nation, to touch the same hand which, not long ago, had been tortured, to exchange a brief word, and to receive his blessing.

            Our group greeted the majestic figure of His Beatitude Kyr Yosyf with enthusiastic applause. With visible emotion, Kyr Augustine gave the following address: 

“Most Blessed Hierarch, here before you is the bishop, priests, representatives of Ukrainian organizations, and faithful which, together, constitute the People of God of the Apostolic Exarchate in Great Britain. It is our pleasure to render You filial homage, fidelity and love. We are all children of our Mother-the-Church which was cut down in our native land but whose roots have spread far and wide, even across the English Channel and which sprung up on the other side— a beautiful branch which is the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Great Britain. It remains part of the Universal Church and of the Ukrainian Nation.”

            “We came to take part in the solemn consecration of Saint Sophia and to observe the achievements which are the result of Your intense labours and of God’s grace upon His children. Wherefore it is a pleasure for us to greet you as our Dearest Hierarch and, on this occasion, to bring you the gift of these cloths for the high altar and side altars. The material from these cloths was made by the same firm that furnishes Buckingham Palace, and the embroidery upon it is the work the members of the Organization of Ukrainian Women in Great Britain (OUZ) from Coventry, Leicester, and Waltham Cross, and of our Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate in London. We also brought a collection toward Saint Sophia, which has already surpassed two-thousand pounds sterling, and which is to continue and which we hope will surpass three-thousand pounds. For our country, this represents a very considerable gift, especially considering that were are still fundraising to pay the debt on our new Cathedral.”

            “On this occasion when we come before Your Beatitude, it is a pleasure for me to render homage and filial love, and to repeat and once again invite Your Beatitude to visit us in Great Britain. We hope that this will take place in the coming year, perhaps around the time of Green Holidays [Pentecost], so that, as with other eparchies around the world, we too might have the joy of welcoming you among us and that You would lift our spirits with Your presence. This [visit] would surely bright forth the choicest fruits for our Church. which grows and flourishes not only to support our life in the lands of emigration but also to support our suffering Church [in Ukraine]. Surely our growth, in a wider sense, represents the fruits of the [spiritual] merits of Your sufferings.” *

            “And here I would like to say that we, the bishop, clergy, and all the faithful, share your dreams and hopes which we have also taken upon ourselves that, God willing, our Particular Church (Pomisna Tserkva), our Ukrainian Catholic Church will soon be crowned with a Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchate.”

            A powerful chorus of Mnohaya lita [God grant him many years] concluded those sincere and heartfelt greetings, to which His Beatitude Kyr Yosyf responded with emotion:

            “Most Reverend Bishop, Dear Pilgrims! I am extraordinarily pleased that, particularly from Great Britain, you came here in such numbers. Our Ukrainian Church in Britain should raise its powerful voice. Never forget that you live in a country that, since the Middle Ages, had ruled the world. I hope that, living among that people, you would benefit from even a small portion of their practical wisdom, courage, and composure, for which the British are famous. Then, like it or not, living among that powerful nation spread across the globe, you will acquire their virtues and characteristics and bring a good portion of those positive qualities to the history of the Ukrainian Nation.”

            “I am especially grateful to you, Dear Bishop, for your donations and for these beautiful altar cloths. God grant that they be a visible testimony of the strength and consciousness of the unity of the Ukrainian nation across the entire globe. And may they serve as a powerful prayer to the Lord God for the many years of your labours. I am especially grateful, especially to You, Bishop, that you are the first in Europe to acquire a Cathedral church as a stronghold and enduring home. Do not fear because, having fled your homeland, you are living as if in a foreign country. Rather the opposite is true: for we should be represented everywhere and have our own homes and strong enclaves. By establishing such homes far and wide, today our emigration can do much more that all those 45 million in Ukraine! Reflect well on this, that your voice, your achievements, your deeds is a voice heard by the world and has tremendous significance. And it is precisely this that our opponents and our enemies fear the most! And if you, Most Reverend Bishop, will lead this people and direct it, you can be confident that the majority of the Ukrainians in Great Britain will be a powerful support, not only for you in Britain, but also for the entire Ukrainian nation throughout the world.”

            “God grant You many years! God grant You success! God grant that you form Your children to become well-educated wise people and leaders, and also that you may succeed and not have to live by begging for bread but from the labour of your own hands. And when you become prosperous and are able to support not only yourselves but also the Church and the whole nation, and raise your children to become honourable people, then you will have fulfilled your calling. May God grant you many years and His blessing.”

            After singing Боже великий, Творче всесильний (O Great God, Almighty Creator, look upon our native land), Kyr Augustine presented to His Beatitude Rev. Ivan Muzychka, Rev. Stefan Orach, Rev. Teodor Tysak, as well as representatives of Ukrainian organizations: Ivan Ravliuk (AUGB), Maria Sydor (OUZ), Bohdan Rohach (SUM), Roman Stryhanyn (Plast), Vasyl Oleksiv (UVC, UIC), Vasyl Bortesky (Obnova), Vasyl Dubil (OBV), V. Parubochy (church men), Onufriy Shtunder (Church elders), Ilya Yavorsky (cantors), I. Shkatuliak (church contacts).

            At the end of this moving encounter, each of the approximately 70 people greeted His Beatitude separately. In the middle of an historic Synod of Ukrainian Catholic Hierarchs, our Major Archbishop sacrificed a lot of time, attention, and love for us. It has made an impression on us which will remain as an enduring testimony not only for those who took part but also the entire Ukrainian community in Great Britain. 

* Slipyi accepted the invitation to visit Britain from 9 to 24 May 1970.  

Yosyf Slipyi enters the Second Vatican Council

"Greeted with an ovation by the Council Fathers, the Metropolitan of Lviv of the Greek Catholic Rite, Józef Slipyj, made a firm and authoritative intervention against atheism at the council session on 11 day of this month [November].

In his speech, the Metropolitan appealed to the Council to find the most appropriate and effective ways for our time to fight this widespread evil and danger throughout the entire world. This appeal to create specific norms for the apostolate of the struggle against atheism made a profound impression on those present. It was like an echo of the words of the Holy Father, spoken at the opening of the second session of the Council.

The first appeal to the struggle against atheism, at the Council, came from the lips of a bishop from behind the Iron Curtain.

The Metropolitan also requested that the Council raise the Metropolitan See of Kiev-Halych to the rank of a patriatchate: the Uniate bishop emphasized that those lands belonged to the sphere of Western Christianity, and of their connection with Catholic Rome and the See of St. Peter."

– Information Service of the Embassy of the Polish Republic to the Vatican, no. 31, Rome, 13 November 1963. 

Andrey Sheptytsky's Sacred Walking Stick

Жезлъ твой и палица твоѧ, та мя оутѣшиста. 
Thy crook and thy staff have comforted me. (Psalm 22/23)

As I near the end of a research project, my friend and colleague Gloria Romaniuk, Archivist of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Winnipeg, sent me a photo, for which I had been searching for a long time. It came from a collection belonging to the late Bishop Michael Hrynchyshyn, CSsR, longtime postulator of the cause of beatification of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky.  He received the photo from Dr. Pavlo Senytsia, alumnus of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Theological Academy in Lviv, and editor of a multi-volume collection of articles regarding that institution. The second and third volume of this work, entitled "Світильник Істини" (Beacon of Truth) contains a partial reconstruction of the story of this famous cane. I have used these and other sources in my work on Sheptytsky, which includes articles regarding his apprenticeship of two priests, each of which, at one time, he looked upon as his successor. Each one of them was to receive this cane as a symbolic gift, in dramatic and perilous circumstances of the First and later of the Second World War.

Who did Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky look upon as his successor? Above all, he was looking for a someone who understood and was dedicated to his principal cause: promoting the union of the Orthodox Churches with Rome or, as he referred to it, “la Cause de l’Union.” During his long term as Metropolitan of Lviv-Halych, he considered several possibilities, among which was his own brother, Hieromonk Klymenti. However, above all others, two members of his clergy stood out for their moral and intellectual gifts, each of whom, at one time, the Metropolitan looked upon as a successor. Both men bore the same Christian name, Yosyf (Joseph). Both were chosen by Kyr Andrey to educate and form his clergy, as rector of his Major Seminary. Both were gifted academic theologians that had studied in Innsbruck and Vienna (and Rome). These men were Yosyf Botsian (1879–1926) and Yosyf Slipyi (1892–1984).

Father Botsian was the first to receive the cane, during the First World War, when he was accompanying Metropolitan Andrey to Kyiv. Sheptytsky had been arrested by Russian Imperial authorities, when they invaded Austrian Galicia and captured Lemberg (Lviv), in September 1914. He was deported to Kyiv and destined to spend the rest of the war in Russian confinement, at one point in a prison monastery for religious dissidents. The Tsarist authorities allowed three ecclesiastics to accompany him on the first part of his journey. These were Father Yosyf Botsian, the seminary rector, Father Dmytro Yaremko (1879–1915), the vice-rector, and Brother Yosyf Grodsky, the Metropolitan’s valet. They arrived in Kyiv and were confined at the city’s Hotel Continental.

In 1908, Kyr Sheptytsky had received special powers from Pope Pius X, confirming him as administrator of all Uniate eparchies that had been uncanonically suppressed by the Russian State, from 1772 to 1875. Among these powers was the right to ordain bishops for these dormant sees. After arriving in Kyiv, He spent several days in intense reflection and prayer. Fearing for the survival of the Greek-Catholic Church, Sheptytsky decided to make use of the special powers to ordain Botsian and Yaremko to the episcopacy. By virtue of the same faculties, he assigned them the suppressed bishoprics of Lutsk and Ostrih.

On 9/22 September 1914, Metropolitan Andrey told Yosyf Botsian to prepare himself to receive episcopal ordination the following day. The ordination took place in secret, on 10/23 September 1914, at the Hotel Continental. Kyr Andrey did not have all of proper vestments and sacred vessels, Thus, instead of the episcopal crozier, he presented Botsian with his walking staff, upon which he carved the following: “Д. І. Сеп. Р.Б. ≠ЦДІ А.Ш. И.Б” (On 10 day of September in the Year of the Lord 1914 Andrey Sheptytsky to Yosyf Botsian).” The newly consecrated bishops and Grodsky were permitted to return to Lviv, whereas Sheptytsky was deported to Nizhni Novgorod and thence to Kursk, Suzdal, and Jaroslavl, deep within European Russia. Kyr Andrey had the dubious fame of being the only Catholic bishop imprisoned during the First World War. While Petrograd claimed that this was necessary, due to evidence of political intrigue found during a search of the latter's papers, documents from Russian archives show that the decision to eliminate the Uniate leader was taken before the Tsar's armies invaded Austria-Hungary.

Botsian and Yaremko were deported to Siberia the following year. Yaremko did not survive his Siberian confinement, whereas Bostian’s health was ruined by it. Forced by illness to resign as rector in 1919, Botsian was never permitted to take possession of his eparchy. The Second Polish Republic, which had occupied Volyn and its capital Lutsk, imposed an invisible barrier (known as the Sokal Border) prohibiting Greek-Catholics from ministering east of the Lviv-Halych Metropolia. Shortly before Kyr Botsian's untimely death, Father Slipyi, who had been made rector in 1925, invited him to move to the Lviv Seminary, while quarters at the canons’ residence near Saint George’s Archcathedral were being prepared. On 21 November 1926, Slipyi administered the Sacrament of Holy Anointing to Botsian, whom he discovered lifeless, sitting in a chair in the seminary corridor. The following day, Slipyi preached a farewell sermon. The the funeral, which was the largest that Lviv had witnessed in many years. Writing to the Nuncio tweek weeks later, Slipyi commented: “We all regret the death of Bishop Botsian, because it is a great loss for our Church and a weakening of its situation.”

In 1939, Yosyf Slipyi began his own episcopal ministry as a clandestine bishop. Like Botsian, his nomination remained secret for just a little over two years and did not appear in any official church publication. After sending a personal courier to Rome, Metropolitan Andrey received word indicating that that Pope Pius XII had acceded to his request for a successor. In a letter, written in code, Cardinal Eugène Tisserant told the Metropolitan: “you may consider Your beloved disciple to be Your coadjutor and successor. You may proceed to make him such with the necessary function.” In other words, he could go ahead with the episcopal consecration. Describing the ceremony, Slipyi later wrote to a friend in Switzerland:

In place of a bishop’s crozier I received the Metropolitan’s wooden walking staff which, already once in Kyiv, he had given to Bishop Yosyf Botsian, of blessed memory, as a shepherds crozier, and also the same episcopal ring and the same hieratikon [that he had give Botsian]. These items had been rescued, in a very mysterious way, before the Bolsheviks destroyed the Major Seminary. In this, I specifically perceived the hand of Divine Providence.

Metropolitan Andrey intended this deliberate gesture to contain various layers of meaning: it symbolized that Slipyi was following in Botsian’s footsteps as Sheptytsky’s chosen successor; it also signified that, as Botsian had been consecrated secretly in emergency circumstances, so too Slipyi was being called to exercise his episcopal ministry in hardship and peril. This symbolic act was a clear indication that the “torch” had (literally) been passed from Botsian to Slipyi.

In a letter to Pope Benedixt XV in 1917, Sheptytsky had himself observed that it was that very Hand of Divine Providence which had freed him and Bostian from Siberia and brought down the mighty colossus, which had held the Uniate Churches captive for centuries. However, Providence also decreed that Slipyi was destined to share in many aspects of his predecessors’ fates. After having served 8 years in prison, he was exiled to Yenissey and Krasnoyarsk in Siberia where, almost forty years before, Bishop Botsian had been held. Following eighteen years in the Gulag, upon his elevation to the sacra porpora in 1965, Cardinal Yosyf Slipyi paid tribute to the earlier Father Yosyf who, but by the same mysterious Providence, might have taken his place as Metropolitan Andrey’s successor. 

Yosyf Slipyi: Metropolitan Sheptytsky's Successor

Among other significant historical commemorations, the year 2017 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Yosyf Slipyi: priest, scholar, rector, bishop, metropolitan, cardinal-in-pectore and, following 18-years in the Soviet Gulag, major-archbishop, cardinal, and finally acclaimed patriarch of a Church that had spread across five continents of the globe. It also marks the centenary of his priestly ordination at the hands of his mentor, Metropolitan Andrey Count Sheptytsky.

As this year began, I happened to be working on an article about Slipyi but not out of an interest for him, per se. My interest in him, and for the purpose of which I was given access to still-classified files, is as a member of  Sheptytsky’s inner circle; his closest collaborators that shared his vision and strove to make it reality. My purpose it to examine Slipyi’s early career and describe the qualities, achievements, and circumstances which led to him to become Sheptytsky's successor as head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.

(to be continued...)