Husar enthroned as archbishop major (02/04/01)

Husar enthroned as archbishop major

Named cardinal by Pope John Paul II

by R. L. Chomiak
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

LVIV - The 405-year-old Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, with its faithful on the five continents, once again has a "head and father" who also will carry the title of cardinal of the Holy Roman Catholic Church: His Beatitude Lubomyr Husar, archbishop major of Lviv for Ukrainians.

On Sunday, January 28, in the 255-year-old St. George Cathedral in Lviv, the Ukrainian immigrant to the United States, former Studite monk and former auxiliary bishop to his late predecessor, Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, was enthroned as primate of the UGCC.

The actual ceremony of enthronement was simple and short. But the events that led up to it were full of drama, uncertainty and surprise. They were historic, too.

During the 11 a.m. liturgy celebrated by some 30 hierarchs resplendent in ornate vestments, Archbishop-Metropolitan Stephen Sulyk of Philadelphia, as chairman of the synod that elected the new head of the Church three days earlier, asked Bishop Husar if he accepts the choice of his brother-bishops "because we want to lead you to the altar."

After receiving the designate's acceptance, Archbishop Sulyk, together with Archbishop Michael Bzdel of Winnipeg and Archbishop Jan Martyniak of Peremyshl-Warsaw led the new archbishop major to the altar. The other hierarchs followed, singing "Axios" in Greek (he is worthy); "Axios," echoed the cathedral choir. This symbolized the Byzantine roots of this patrticular Catholic Church, which traces its beginnings to Brest in 1596, when Ukrainian Orthodox bishops recognized the authority of the Roman pope, but retained their Eastern rite.

After the Gospel the new archbishop major gave a homily that he called "the program for the future" of the Church.

The surprise came at the end of the liturgy when among those greeting the new head of the global Church, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, the Apostolic nuncio, or the Vatican's ambassador in Ukraine, announced that just a few minutes earlier Pope John Paul II had named His Beatitude Lubomyr a cardinal. His elevation, together with that of all the other new members of the College of Cardinals, is set for February 21 in Rome. The element of surprise was heightened, because the pontiff had named 37 new cardinals just a few days earlier, and was not expected to name a Ukrainian any time soon.

Bishop Husar was among a group of seven new nominees for cardinals who were announced on January 28, among them Roman Catholic Bishop Marian Jaworski of Lviv.

Archbishop Major Husar's program can be characterized as "faith of our fathers." He said, "it is not my personal program; it is what we received from our ancestors."

"More than a thousand years ago," he said, "Lord God gave our people the gift of faith. We are Christian people who live in accordance with the rules of Jesus Christ." During the past 100 years, he continued, "many strong confessors of the faith saved this faith" despite great difficulties, "and this is what we must continue to do."

Archbishop Husar then explained that keeping the faith means love and charity towards others - ecumenism. He cited that day's Gospel, which described how Jesus shocked his followers by deciding to dine at the house of Zaccheus, the head tax collector, who was considered "a public sinner" (Luke 19:1-10). But living in faith, the archbishop major said, means imitating Christ, and "this should be our main goal, [our] program."

He complimented the Ukrainians in Ukraine for not being vindictive towards those who had persecuted them. He called it "a sign of spiritual strength" and said the Ukrainian people "came out of the persecution with their gift of God - faith that was instituted by St. Volodymyr," the ruler who brought Christianity to Kyivan Rus' in 988.

The new primate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church called for deepening the faith among those who have it and offering the gift of faith to those who have moved away from it. "There are many of those among us, but they are not enemies, they are hungry people who need this gift - in the form of our words and our testimony," he explained.

Living in faith, he said, also means solving the problems of division among Christians. "There was no division ... during the time of Volodymyr," he noted, suggesting that the reason for division could be that "our faith had cooled." He admonished his followers to renew the faith in their relations with other Christians and non-Christians, "to embrace one another in faith, hope and charity."

The synod that elected Bishop Husar, a Lviv native, to the highest office of the Ukrainian Catholic Church was held almost exactly 55 years after and in the same city as the Synod of Lviv of March 9-10, 1946, that was convened on the orders of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to repudiate the Union of Brest of 1596 and merge the Ukrainian Catholic Church into the Russian Orthodox Church. Until 1989 the Church existed underground in Ukraine and expanded in other parts of the world.

Since the return from the Soviet gulag of Patriarch and Cardinal Josyf Slipyj, the last head of the Church before it was banned in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Catholic Church was raised to a self-governing patriarchal level. Cardinal Slipyj was appointed the first archbishop major and later Cardinal Lubachivsky was appointed his successor. But now, as in the case of other patriarchates, the hiearchs of the Church elect, in secret, the archbishop major. The only difference is that, unlike patriarchs, the elected archbishops major have to be confirmed by the pope.

The election of Bishop Husar as archbishop major was the first to follow this procedure, thus it was of historic significance.

Only Ukrainian hierarchs took part in the deliberations, which lasted one and a half days on January 24-25. The apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Eterovic, was in Lviv, but did not participate in the synod. His duty was to inform the pope of the synod's choice. He did so late on January 25, but there was no announcement and the synod continued behind closed doors on January 26. While the hierarchs awaited word from Rome, according to a communiqué issued after the synod, they discussed the planned visit to Ukraine by Pope John Paul II in June.

Archbishop Eterovic delivered the pope's approval at 1 p.m. Lviv time on Friday, January 26, and within an hour the synod members came out of the historic Metropolitan's Palace (today the headquarters of the archbishop major), across from St. George's Cathedral and spoke with the press and interested persons who had gathered there.

There was some thought in Church circles of postponing the enthronement ceremony to a later date in order to invite high government officials to the event, but Bishop Husar, who had been administering the Church since the death of Cardinal Lubachivsky, opted for the "fast track" - two days after his confirmed election.

The cathedral was filled by the faithful; also present were government representatives, some clergy and bishops of other Churches as well as the Ukrainian hierarchs who concelebrated the liturgy with their new leader.

At heart, His Beatitude Lubomyr, 68, is still a Studite monk and a follower of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, who made the Ukrainian Catholic Church a global one by sending priests to minister to Ukrainians who emigrated to other lands, and who preached and worked for ecumenism.

In an interview before the synod, Bishop Husar had suggested that the leader the Church needed now is "a person who in the political world is known as a technocrat, a professional. But there is one very important thing for the Church: whoever is elected would have to emphasize the development of the spiritual life of the Church, because that is the reason for its existence."

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