Turning the pages back... September 7, 1984 (09/01/91)

Turning the pages back...

September 7, 1984

On September 7, 1984, Patriarch Josyf Slipyj of the "Pomisna" (Particular) Ukrainian Catholic Church died in Rome at the age of 92.

Patriarch Josyf was born in the village of Zazdrist in western Ukraine on February 17, 1892.

Already in his youth, he showed great diligence, intelligence, patience and charity. Because of these qualities, he was soon noticed by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky of Galicia, who sent the young man in 1912 to the famed Theological University in Innsbruck, Austria.

After his ordination, he continued his studies at the Gregorium and Angelicum universities and the Oriental Institute in Rome.

Due to uncertain conditions in Ukraine during the 1930s, Metropolitan Sheptytsky, with the approval of Rome, consecrated Msgr. Slipyj archbishop of Lviv, "sub secreta." The chirotony took place secretly because this was the time of Russian occupation and any mention of this appointment would have caused great repressions by the Communist authorities.

With the death of Metropolitan Sheptytsky on November 1, 1944, Msgr. Slipyj, became metropolitan of Galicia. On April 11, 1945, Metropolitan Slipyj, along with the entire Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy, was arrested. He was sentenced in 1946 and disappeared into the huge Soviet penal complex. It was only after Stalin's death in 1953 that some news about the fate of the metropolitan began coming into Ukraine from prisoners who had spent time in camps with him and from private letters.

Patriarch Josyf was the only member of the Ukrainian Catholic Church hierarchy to survive the Soviet destruction of that Church in Ukraine in the 1940s. He endured 18 years of imprisonment in Soviet camps for refusing to betray the Ukrainian Catholic Church and for fidelity to the Holy See. Through the intervention of President John F. Kennedy and Pope John XXIII and the persistent struggle of Ukrainian Catholics all over the world, Metropolitan Slipyj was released from the Soviet Union and arrived in Rome in early February 1963.

In Rome, he established a Ukrainian Catholic seminary, built St. Sophia Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Catholic University.

In 1965, he was named a cardinal by Pope Paul VI. He began calling Ukrainian Catholic Bishops' synods hoping one day to have the Vatican recognize the Patriarchate of Ukrainian Catholics all over the free world as well as in the underground Church of Soviet Ukraine.

Pleas to recognize the Ukrainian Catholic primate as patriarch were intensified in late 1977, but they were not successful.