Pope to beatify 27 martyrs of Ukrainian Church (05/06/01)

Pope to beatify 27 martyrs of Ukrainian Church

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Pope John Paul II will beatify 27 Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church martyrs for the faith during his visit to Ukraine in June, the UGCC announced on April 25. The beatification of the eight bishops, 15 priests, three nuns and one layman was expected after the holy pontiff recognized them as martyrs of the Church. That action moves them another step forward in the long process toward sainthood.

Twenty-six of the officially recognized martyrs succumbed to persecution at the hands of the Soviet regime between 1935 and 1973, while the Nazis murdered one at the Polish concentration camp in Majdanek.

The announcement by the pope came just seven weeks after the UGCC submitted reports on the 27 as candidates for beatification. The reports included information on each martyr's life; documentation of his or her death; and an analysis of theological works, if such existed. The process for recognition of martyrdom for the 27 was begun in 1997.

The speed with which the pope accepted the proposals suggests that he has decided to make the beatification of the 27 a central aspect of his visit to Ukraine, according to the Catholic Information Agency. Pope John Paul is scheduled to spend four days in Ukraine on June 23-27, with stops in Kyiv and Lviv.

The Rev. Roman Terekhovskyi, vice-postulate of the UGCC, said on April 25 in Kyiv that the action by Pope John Paul II would not be unusual.

"When the pope visits a country there is a tradition that the program should include a beatification or canonization," explained the Rev. Terekhovskyi.

The vice-postulate said that the recognition by the Holy See underscores the degree of persecution the UGCC endured after it was banned in 1946, when local officials of the Soviet regime used their lackeys in the Church to stage a special sobor (church council) that liquidated the UGCC. Following the decision, all of the UGCC's bishops and thousands of clergy and laity were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camp, Some never emerged from those camps.

"The suffering of the Ukrainian Church in this century was perhaps at moments worse than that experienced by the young Church in the first centuries," said the Rev. Terekhovskyi.

The priest divided the new group of martyrs into three sets: those whose murders were premeditated and who endured extensive torture; those who died in concentration camps; and those who survived the camps but succumbed afterwards as a result of the hardships endured.

The biographies of the 27 candidates for sainthood reveal the diverse types of persons who were ready to sacrifice their lives for their faith, and the pain and torture they accepted in refusing to bend to the wishes of their persecutors.

One such example is the Rev. Emilian Kovch, who was martyred by the Nazis. Born in 1884 in Kosiv, western Ukraine, he was a priest in the border town of Peremyshl. The Gestapo arrested Father Emilian in 1943 for harboring Jews. On March 25, 1944, he was incinerated in the ovens of the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.

The Rev. Klymentii Sheptytsky, the younger brother of Servant of God Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, gave shelter to Jews during World War II. On Jun 5, 1947, he was arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to eight years of hard labor. He died May 1, 1951, in Volodymyr Prison. Born in 1869, the Rev. Sheptytsky entered the Monastery of St. Theodore the Studite in 1911 after giving up his secular career. He was ordained in 1915, served as hegumen at the Univ Lavra, and in 1944 was elevated to archimandrite.

The single layperson in the group, Volodymyr Pryima, was a 35-year-old cantor and conductor of the church choir of the village of Stradch near Yavoriv. He and the local priest, the Rev. Mykola Konrad, were tortured and beaten to death by NKVD agents on June 26, 1941, in the woods outside the village as they were returning from the home of an ill woman who had requested that her confession be heard.

The Rev. Konrad, who also is on the list of those to be beatified, was born in Strus in the Ternopil Oblast and finished doctoral studies in Rome before becoming a priest in 1899. He taught in the high schools of Berezhany and Terebovlia before being asked by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky to teach at the Lviv Theological Academy. Afterwards he became the parish priest in Stradch.

Another ordinary priest who died a terrible death because of extraordinary dedication to his faith was Zynovii Kovalyk, born in 1903 in the village of Ivachiv near Ternopil. Soviet officials arrested him in his church in the Volyn Oblast of Ukraine on December 20, 1940, while he gave a homily on the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mother. He was crucified on the wall of a corridor in the Brygidky prison.

Many of the others shared no less horrific fates. The Rev. Roman Lysko, born in 1914 in the town of Horodky in the Lviv Oblast, was arrested by the NKVD in 1949 and imprisoned in the prison on Lontskyi Street of Lviv. The young priest is said to have gone insane and could be heard throughout the prison singing psalms in full voice. Some say he was entombed alive in a prison wall. He died on October 14, 1949.

The Rev. Yakym Senkivsky, born in 1896 in the village of Hayi Velyki in the Ternopil Oblast, is said to have been boiled to death in the Drohobych prison on June 29, 1941, three days after he was arrested by Soviet officials at a local monastery, where he was the protohegumen.

Also included on the list are two nuns who died in prison in the Tomsk Oblast in Siberia, Sisters Lavrentia-Levkadia Harasymiv (1911-1952) and Olimpia-Olha Bida (1903-1952), both members of the Order of Sisters of St. Joseph. The third nun recognized as a martyr is Sister Tarsykia-Olha Matskiv (1919-1944), who was gunned down by NKVD agents as she opened a door for them to the Sisters Servants Monastery in which she resided. The Soviet secret police wanted to shut down the monastery.

Among the several bishops on the list are Bishop Nykyta Budka, who had served in Canada before returning to Ukraine and later died in a Soviet concentration camp in Siberia in 1949, and Bishop Vasyl Velychkovsky, who twice was incarcerated by Soviet officials before being allowed to leave the Soviet Union for Canada in 1972, where he died a year later.

Also recognized as martyrs for the faith are Bishops Hryhorii Khomyshyn (1867-1947), Josaphat Kotsylovsky (1876-1947), Nykolai Charnetsky (1884-1959), Hryhorii Lakota (1883-1950), Ivan Sleziuk (1896-1973) and Semeon Lukach (1893- 1964).

Others who are to be beatified during official ceremonies in Lviv are: the Revs. Zygmund Horazdovsky (active in 1845-1920, founder of the order of Sisters of Mercy of St. Joseph), Ivan Ziatyk (1899-1952), Leonid Fiodorov (1879-1935), Vitalii Bairak (1907-1946), Oleksii Zarytsky (1912-1063), Andrii Ischak (1887-1941), Petro Verhun (1890-1957), Mykola Tsehelsky (1896-1951) and Severian Baranyk (born 1889, arrested 1941 and never again seen.)

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