BOOK REVIEW: "Faith and Hope" in photos (08/17/97)

BOOK REVIEW: "Faith and Hope" in photos

by Irene Jarosewich

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - As part of their effort to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Union of Brest last year, the St. Sophia Religious Association of Ukrainian Catholics U.S.A this past spring published an excellent photo collection, "Faith and Hope: The Kyivan Church in Communion with Rome 1596-1996."

Andrzej Polec of Poland, a free-lance photographer, was in Ukraine 20 times within four years, traveling close to 40,000 kilometers and shot several hundred rolls of film for this book. As part of his continuing series of photobooks on Churches in Eastern Europe, he had chosen to document the revival of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Ukraine and began this project in 1993. Previously he published photo collections titled "Kreuzwege in Polen" (Crossroads in Poland) and "Credo" (Creed). A chance encounter in August 1995 at the airport in Warsaw with Prof. Leonid Rudnytzky of La Salle University in Philadelphia led to the final collaboration on this project between Mr. Polec and the St. Sophia Religious Association. Prof. Rudnytsky and Oleksiy Opanasiuk, a graduate student of Central and Eastern European Studies at La Salle University, edited the text for this 143-page publication.

Interspersed among the wonderful color photographs of the active religious life of Greek-Catholics, as well as images of secular life in Ukraine during the past few years, are photos and document reproductions dating from before the 1991 declaration of Ukraine's independence.

Among the selection are photos of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyj; the activities of the Church of the Catacombs (referred to as Underground Church in the book); nuns and priests exiled to Siberia in 1946; the desolate remains of church buildings after Akcja Wisla in Poland; the return to the West from Siberia of Patriarch Josyf Slipyj; and demonstrations of Catholic faithful in Moscow in the 1980s.

A regrettable exception to the historic photographs included in this volume is the omission of any photos documenting the return to Lviv of Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky from exile in Rome during Easter 1991. A number of exceptional photographs of this dramatic moment for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Ukraine and in the West are on file in the Church archives in Lviv, as well as in a several personal collections.

There are several dozen full-page color plates in this photobook. The paper stock, lithography, typesetting and binding are of very high quality - essential for a book of color photographs to successfully convey the essence of its images. "Faith and Hope: The Kyivan Church in Communion with Rome 1596-1996" can be purchased for $39 (includes shipping and handling) by writing to: St. Sophia Religious Association of Ukrainian Catholics, 7911 Whitewood Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027; (215) 635-1555. Please include a return address.

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