2001: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Ukrainian Churches: papal visit tops the news

Religious activity in Ukraine came to a historic peak this year when the country's Greek-Catholic faithful, long persecuted under Soviet rule, welcomed the head of the Catholic Church and the successor to St. Peter on ancient Rus' soil. The holy father's pilgrimage, which roused strong opposition from some Orthodox cirlces, fulfilled a long-held dream of both the Ukrainian faithful and the Catholic primate to openly and jointly concelebrate eastern rite liturgy.

For five days between June 23 and 27, Pope John Paul II, the leader of nearly 1 billion faithful of the Catholic Church, visited his 6-million-strong flock in Ukraine in a trip that, in the end, surpassed all expectations. It left an indelible mark on the millions who came out to see him, as well as on his relations with the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church that has been in communion with the Vatican See for over 400 years.

It was the 94th official foreign journey in the 24 years of the papacy of the Polish holy father, but one that his personal secretary called "a long-held dream," one that he had talked about for "11, 12, even 14 years."

Nearly 3 million people, the faithful and the curious, saw the aging and frail pontiff during a youth rally and at four divine liturgies, two in Kyiv and two in Lviv - celebrated in the Latin and Byzantine rites. People came from all over the world: Ukrainians from Australia, Canada and the United States, along with hundreds of thousands of Poles and thousands of Belarusians and Russians, Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Czechs, Slovaks, and two Congolese who happened to have been in Kyiv at the time.

In many ways it was a trip home. Although Pope John Paul II was not born in Ukraine, his Ukrainian mother was born outside of Drohobych. And while this was his first trip to Ukraine as the head of the Catholic Church, he had spent time in the western part of the country in his youth and had been stationed there during his military service.

Attendance was low at the two divine liturgies offered during Pope John Paul II's stay in Kyiv because, not only was the weather threatening, but people were put off by the tight security and a belief that more of the same would make it difficult to get to the Chaika Aerodrome. The distance to the aerodrome, located eight miles from the city center, also did not help.

There were bright spots, however - first and foremost at the meeting of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, where the holy father was quite unexpectedly greeted with hugs and kisses by the leaders of two of three Orthodox confessions in Ukraine. Warm words by the chief rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine and the head mufti of the Crimean Tatars gave further proof that it was only a minority of Ukraine's confessions that opposed the pope's journey to Ukraine.

The papal visit caused a large wave of concern among certain Orthodox leaders. Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) requested that Pope John Paul II's trip to Ukraine be postponed in a written letter approved by the UOC-MP Holy Synod and Council of Bishops issued on January 22. Metropolitan Volodymyr said the current poor relations between Ukrainian Greek-Catholics and Ukrainian Orthodox faithful in western Ukraine was the main reason he opposed the scheduled visit.

The letter threatened that, if the pope's visit went ahead as planned, Metropolitan Volodymyr and the 42 hierarchs of the UOC-MP, which are part of the Russian Orthodox Church and continue to claim millions of faithful in Ukraine, would not meet the holy father, and none of their clergy would take part in the program of the visit. The letter seemed to be an attempt to forbid the pope to meet with anybody representing either of the two Ukrainian Orthodox churches that do not recognize the Moscow Patriarch - and particularly named Patriarch Filaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate, whom the Moscow Patriarchate had excommunicated.

The letter requesting that the pope should have "postponed" his visit to Ukraine seemed an unsuccessful attempt to disguise a deeper motive: the UOC-MP was notifying the pope that it does not want him in Ukraine at all, ever.

Reacting to these efforts by the UOC-MP to have the visit canceled, both the Ukrainian government and the Vatican issued strong statements on January 23 stating that such actions will not derail the pontiff's June trip. A Vatican spokesman that same day issued a statement reconfirming the pope's plans. The statement explained that the 86-year-old pontiff "will meet with Ukrainian Catholics, and he hopes that he will be able to promote a peaceful ecumenical dialogue in this country." It added, "The visit is to take place as it was scheduled."

In protest against the papal visit some 250 faithful of the UOC-MP marched from the Monastery of the Caves in Kyiv, one of the holiest sites of Orthodoxy, to the Verkhovna Rada building on May 25, calling for the visit to be canceled.

The head of the UOC-MP also expressed concern that the pontiff would meet with the leaders of the two other Ukrainian Orthodox confessions, the UOC - Kyiv Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, both of which the Moscow Church views as non-canonical.

On June 21, about 3,000 UOC-MP supporters again protested on the streets of Kyiv carrying placards proclaiming, "The pope is persona non-grata," "The pope is the forerunner of the anti-Christ" and "Orthodoxy or death." It was the fourth and largest protest by UOC-MP faithful preceding the holy father's visit.

During a press conference in Kyiv on May 29, the papal nuncio to Ukraine, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, delineated a threefold mission for the pope's trip: to meet with the leadership of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which "has deep roots and is very dynamic," as the archbishop explained, and celebrate its successful revival after persecution under Soviet rule; to develop contacts with the Ukrainian government; and to continue a dialogue with the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

Pope John Paul II won over many Kyivans with assertions that he recognizes the ancient city as the "cradle of Eastern Christianity," a statement he used during several appearances and one repeated by his press secretary during a meeting with journalists.

He also gave Ukrainian Greek-Catholics great pleasure by stopping at St. Nicholas Church, their tiny sanctuary located at the site of the Askold's Tomb shrine in Kyiv. There the pontiff prayed to the Our Lady of Zarvanytsia, whose icon had been brought to Kyiv from the tiny village in western Ukraine especially at the pope's request.

During his two and a half days in Kyiv, Pope John Paul II made quick and quiet side trips to honor those murdered by the two totalitarian regimes that scourged Ukraine through much of the 20th century.

On June 24 in the woods outside Bykivnia, a small village bordering Kyiv, the pope memorialized and paid tribute to the thousands of Ukrainian religious and political leaders, artists, writers and teachers who were executed there during Stalin's Great Terror.

On June 25 he paid his respects to the 32,000 Jews massacred by the Nazis at Babyn Yar in a 72-hour time period and to the tens of thousands of Jews and Kyiv residents of other nationalities also murdered there.

The pope also visited St. Alexander's Roman Catholic Church on the last day of his Kyiv trip and met with political and business leaders at Mariinsky Palace. Sixteen of the 17 leaders of the largest religious confessions met with the head of the Catholic Church on June 24 at Kyiv Symphony Hall. Not present was Metropolitan Volodymyr Sabodan of the UOC-MP, which had said from the outset that its leader would not meet with the pope.

However, the most interesting moment occurred at the very beginning of the hour-long meeting, when during introductions the leaders of the other two Orthodox confessions, Patriarch Filaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate and Metropolitan Mefodii of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church kissed the holy pontiff on both cheeks. At the end of the meeting they repeated their actions, clearly in defiant response to threats from ROC Patriarch Aleksei II that any private discussions between what his Church considers illegal, non-canonical elements of Ukrainian Orthodoxy and the pope could lead to a breakdown in relations between Moscow and the Vatican.

The rhythm of the visit markedly quickened and took on a soaring element when the pope's Ukrainian airliner touched down in Lviv. There the mood of Pope John Paul II, who had acted soberly and with restraint during the first part of his trip, lightened considerably.

He was greeted by hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic supporters and well-wishers as his entourage and his popemobile wound through the narrow, cobblestone streets of the medieval town. It gathered more momentum during the first mass, celebrated in Polish in the Latin Rite and largely attended by Poles from across the - more than 100,000 of whom had crossed the border on the previous day.

The trip began to crescendo that afternoon at a youth rally attended by a crowd estimated at 250,000 to 500,000 mostly young people. As what seemed like a never-ending downpour continued to drench and chill the crowd, Pope John Paul II interrupted his homily and spontaneously broke into song. For more than a minute, with an unusually sure and steady voice, he sang several stanzas of a Polish folk song calling for the rain to stop. The solo caused squeals of delight and laughter, and raised the spirits of the drenched multitudes.

The climax, however, occurred the next day, when between 1 million and 1.5 million people descended on the Lviv Hippodrome for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic liturgy and the beatification of 27 martyrs of the faith and the foundress of a religious order, the largest single group to achieve the status of "blessed" in the more than 400-year history of the UGCC.

Jeffrey Wills, spokesperson for the UGCC press service, called it "the largest gathering of people in history for a Byzantine liturgy." Father Borys Gudziak, rector of the Lviv Theological Institute, referring to the Byzantine tradition in which everybody takes part in singing the liturgy, called it the "largest choir ever assembled."

The 28 blessed - 26 of whom perished as a result of Soviet persecution between 1935 and 1973, and one who died at the hands of the Nazis at the Polish concentration camp in Majdanek - consisted of eight bishops, eight priests, seven monks, four nuns and one layperson. Their faces were displayed on two large screens on either side of the stage on which the altar stood as their biographies and the grizzly details of some of their deaths were read prior to the liturgy.

The UGCC continued making headlines this year when its Synod of Bishops began work on January 24 to elect a new primate for the Church following the death of Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky on December 14, 2000, at the age of 86.

Twenty-six hierarchs of the Ukrainian Catholic Church from four continents and the papal nuncio in Ukraine crossed the courtyard from the Metropolitan's Palace to St. George Cathedral to begin their historic conclave with a liturgy. The synod opened 100 years after Andrey Sheptytsky became the archbishop and metropolitan of the Lviv See. For 43 years the cathedral had served as his base and that of his successor, Patriarch and Cardinal Josyf Slipyj. But, from 1946, when the Soviet government forced the Ukrainian Catholic Church underground, until 1991 it was in the hands of the Russian Orthodox Church. With Ukraine's independence St. George Cathedral once again became the headquarters of the Ukrainian Catholic Church worldwide.

The main purpose of the synod was to elect a new archbishop major - the "head and father" of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church to replace Cardinal Lubachivsky. By the end of the second day of deliberations a successor had not yet been elected.

The deliberations lasted one and a half days on January 24-25. The apostolic nuncio, or the Vatican's ambassador in Ukraine, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, informed the pope late on January 25 of the synod's selection, but there was no public announcement of Bishop Husar's election until Friday, January 26.

Archbishop Eterovic delivered the pope's approval at 1 p.m. Lviv time on January 26, and within an hour the synod members came out of the Metropolitan's Palace to speak with the press and interested persons who had gathered there.

Following the selection of Bishop Husar, 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. 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."

The surprise came at the end of the liturgy when Archbishop Eterovic 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, was 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 had not been expected to name a Ukrainian any time soon.

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

On February 21, on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, Archbishop Major Husar was elevated to the rank of cardinal along with 43 other prelates during an outdoor ceremony which Pope John Paul II led, installing the largest group ever of new princes of the Catholic Church.

Also this year, the newly enthroned Cardinal Husar said on May 13 that the headquarters and spiritual center of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church would soon move from Lviv to Kyiv. The new archbishop major of roughly 6 million Catholic faithful made his remarks prior to consecrating the grounds of the future site of the Church's first cathedral in Kyiv. The blessing ceremony took place after Cardinal Husar served his first divine liturgy in Ukraine's capital city since his enthronement as archbishop major and his elevation to cardinal.

Cardinal Husar told journalists prior to the church service that the cathedral, to be called the Sobor of the Resurrection of Christ, would become the new home of the UGCC. "This is the capital. Lviv became the capital because Kyiv was strangled (by Mongol hordes). But now, thank God, we have our free Kyiv, our free country, and we must be where the center is - I believe this is a very normal thing, just as all the other Church centers are in Kyiv," explained Cardinal Husar.

The new cathedral, which is scheduled for completion in 2003 if funding and donations suffice, will be a five-domed structure 49 meters wide, 56 meters long and 61 meters high. It will incorporate traditional design with contemporary features. Four of the gilded domes, representing the four evangelists, will surround a larger, central dome, representing the figure of Christ. The building will be elevated with access to the church from all sides via steps that will surround it. The church will have room for some 1,500 faithful.

This past year the UGCC also saw Bishop Stefan Soroka of Winnipeg enthroned as the new metropolitan-archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia on February 27 to thundering choruses of "Axios!" (he is worthy), sung by the choir within the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Philadelphia. He is the sixth metropolitan of Ukrainian Catholics in the United States, and, at age 49, the youngest ever to hold that seat.

The new spiritual leader of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States succeeds Metropolitan-Archbishop Stephen Sulyk, 76, who submitted his resignation to Pope John Paul II, pursuant to the provisions of canon law, upon reaching the age of 75 in October 1999. The resignation was accepted and the new metropolitan was appointed by the holy father on November 29, 2000.

More than 2,000 faithful and clergy, as well as prelates from the Ukrainian Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches filled the cathedral to witness the ceremony. The official enthronement itself was conducted by Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, apostolic nuncio to the United States. Two newly appointed cardinals, Archbishop Major Lubomyr Husar, primate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, and Roman Catholic Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Washington, participated in the event.

The prelates and faithful present included four cardinals, 17 Eastern Catholic metropolitans and bishops, 16 Roman Catholic bishops, Bishop Vsevolod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A., about 90 priests and 70 nuns, and over 2,000 laity, among them nearly 400 children from the eparchy's parishes.

This past year also saw the 950th anniversary celebration of the Pecherska Lavra, or Monastery of the Caves. Representatives of all the Churches of world Orthodoxy gathered on August 28 to commemorate the jubilee with two of the three Ukrainian confessions absent. They were barred from taking part in the celebration of one of Orthodoxy's most holy shrines because they are considered "uncanonical."

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) held separate morning liturgies at their respective cathedrals because officials of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, the UOC - Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), said they would not allow their representatives onto the grounds of the Monastery of the Caves, which the UOC-MP controls.

In an effort to treat the three Ukrainian Orthodox Churches equally, President Kuchma, along with an official delegation, attended all three ceremonies, ending up at the Monastery of the Caves for the finale.

He presented Metropolitan Volodymyr of the UOC-MP with a 300-year-old Ukrainian Bible as a gift in commemoration of the anniversary. The president also visited the relic of Apostle Andrew the First-Called, whose remains were brought to the Monastery of the Caves by Archbishop Christodul of Athens of the Church of Hellas.

In other Orthodox Church news this year, the Zaluchia Internat (orphanage) and another center in Znamianka, where children have been living in deplorable conditions, received essential aid they had been desperately seeking thanks to the generosity of several benefactors in the Ukrainian American community and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A. (see section on Ukrainians in the U.S.).

The Church adopted the two orphanages and in January presented the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund (CCRF) with a generous grant of $40,000.

The funds were used to develop appropriate educational and physical therapy programs for the disabled children, improve nutritional and medical care, upgrade the physical appearance and sanitary conditions so that the orphans can be treated in a more humane environment - as well as to develop a strategic plan that can sustain improvements beyond the early phases of emergency relief.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church also made news this year when it took the first step in realizing Patriarch Mstyslav's dream of creating a resource "to preserve the treasures of the national-spiritual creativity of our Ukrainian people, especially those which are of ancient origin."

On September 25, 1966, then Archbishop Mstyslav and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church dedicated the Memorial Church Museum located beneath St. Andrew Memorial Church in spite of the fact that the space below the church was initially intended as a mausoleum.

On April 21 of this year, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, upon moving the museum collection, hosted an opening and blessing of the temporary museum exhibition in the Ukrainian Cultural Center. In the museum, Prof. Raisa Zacharchuk-Chuhaj gave a lecture on the significance of the museum collection titled "Our Museum - A Unique Treasure of Spirituality and Culture of the Ukrainian People."

The next day the Ukrainian Orthodox Church consecrated the finished Holy Resurrection Mausoleum and Museum devoted to the life of Patriarch Mstyslav located beneath the Memorial Church.

The Church has drawn up plans to create a Historical and Educational Complex that will be an annex of the current Consistory/Library building at St. Andrew Metropolia Center and will give the museum artifacts a permanent home. The complex will include state-of-the art museum display areas, a permanent memorial to the Great Famine, and a museum lounge, library, lecture room and reading area.

Churches in Ukraine were also busy this year making strides to ensure the national recognition of its academic institutions but is battling the state for licensing and accreditation. Seven years after the Lviv Theological Academy (LTA) reopened it doors, it has received recognition throughout Europe and in the United States as a respected institution of higher learning.

The LTA has lobbied Ukrainian government officials, to no avail, to acknowledge it as a legitimate educational institution and recognize the degree the academy confers on those students who complete its rigorous curriculum.

The LTA joined forces with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate to overcome this most difficult initial obstacle. Cooperation began after a conference in the winter of 1997 attended by all the major Christian confessions in Ukraine. Today the UGCC and the UOC-KP have organizations working to put theology on the list of state-recognized academic disciplines. A by-product of this cooperation may be expanded inter-confessional cooperation.

The LTA prepared a 2,000-page document outlining state standards and criteria for the study of theology, right down to course outlines. Once recognition is achieved, the LTA would move to the second step, licensing by the government to acknowledge the academy's coursework as being on the university level, to be followed by the final step, accreditation, which officially would recognize the degrees the school extends to those of its students who complete requirements for graduation.

In related news, during his historic visit to Ukraine, Pope John Paul II on June 26 blessed the Lviv Theological Academy's new university on Striiska Street, as well as more than 300 of its faculty, staff and students.

The Rev. Dr. Gudziak, rector of the Lviv Theological Academy, greeted the pope and asked him to bless the university and its members. Speaking in Latin, the pope used a megaphone to bless the many spectators, then generously sprinkled the crowd with holy water. After the blessing, the Lviv Theological Academy's Institute of Church History museum presented the holy father with a small case used as an altar with a chalice and paten used at liturgies during the underground period of the Catholic Church in Ukraine.

In other church news this year, Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma paid homage to the relics of St. Andrew the First-Called Apostle on August 27 after attending services at the Monastery of the Caves in celebration of the religious shrine's 950th anniversary.

The Archiepiscopate of Athens of the Orthodox Church of Greece allowed for the relics, a skull thought to be the remains of St. Andrew, who was the first person chosen to follow Jesus Christ as his disciple and the brother of St. Peter, to be brought to Kyiv in conjunction with the commemorations. The relic arrived on August 25 in Kyiv, where it was viewed by more than 600,000 pilgrims from various countries during its 10-day stay in the city.

On September 4, the relic's final day in Kyiv, it was brought to the newly built Chapel of St. Andrew the First-Called Apostle, which stands at the edge of the Monastery of the Caves complex, and then moved across the street to St. Mykhailo's Greek-Catholic Church at Askold's Grave, where short prayer services were held, before being returned to Patrai, Greece, its permanent home.

On October 10, bishops, priests, deacons, monastics and delegates participating in the 16th Triennial Sobor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A. (UOC-USA) - under the theme "Sanctify them in the Truth. Thy Word is the Truth!" - solemnly enthroned an icon of the Mother of God of Pochaiv in procession from St. Andrew Memorial Church to the main auditorium of the Ukrainian Cultural Center. Amid the prayerful refrains of the hymn dedicated to the Mother of God, the sobor was called to order by Metropolitan Constantine.

Throughout the four days of proceedings, primary attention was given to the agenda of spiritual growth and development through the holy mysteries. Participating in the sobor were over 200 clergy and lay delegates representing parishes in the three eparchies of the UOC-USA.

The 16th Sobor concluded as it began, with a divine liturgy and a response to Christ's invitation: "In the fear of God, with faith and in love, draw near!"

Also in Orthodox Church news St. Vladimir senior and junior chapters of the Ukrainian Orthodox League of the U.S.A. hosted the 54th annual Ukrainian Orthodox League Convention on July 18-22 at the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel in Philadelphia. The theme of this past year's convention was "Now you are the light in the Lord: Walk as children of the Light" (Ephesians 5:8).

In attendance were hierarchs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A., Metropolitan Constantine, Archbishop Antony and Archbishop Vsevolod. About 250 delegates and guests attended the sessions during the day, along with various religious and cultural workshops.

Newly enthroned Cardinal Husar made other news this year when he traveled to the United States, visiting the places where he had lived and worked, when the unexpected terrorist attacks of September 11 occurred.

On the Sunday after the attack, Cardinal Husar changed his schedule to lead liturgy and deliver a sermon at St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church in New York City, just three miles north of the former World Trade Center. He urged the more than 500 Ukrainian Catholics present at the liturgy to pray and remember God's commandment to love thy neighbor, appealed for calm and spoke against violent retaliation.

The liturgy and a $100-a-ticket banquet afterwards capped off a weeklong visit during which Cardinal Husar attended a reunion of gymnasium students in a Salzburg, Austria, displaced persons camp, where his family lived following World War II.

In a very interesting development, John L. Allen Jr., the Vatican correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter, writing in his October 21 column titled "The Word from Rome," said: "This week I want to introduce a new papabile, or candidate to be pope, to the world. He is Lubomyr Husar of the Greek-Catholic Church in Ukraine, a smiling, humble man whose life experience and theological outlook might just add up to the right stuff. ... My aim this week, therefore, is to put Husar's red hat in the ring."

What makes the idea even more interesting and noteworthy - aside from Cardinal Husar's ability to handle complex political situations (read: relationship with UOC-MP), his humility and modesty as a hierarch in the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic faith (read: Cardinal Husar's spending more than a decade with all of the burdens of being a bishop but none of the privileges), not to mention the issue of timing, given the pope's frail health, which might make the Ukrainian cardinal the right man at the right time - is the fact that members of the mainstream religious community, outside of Ukrainian circles, such as The National Catholic Reporter, are taking notice.

In other papal news this year, Pope John Paul II made a pastoral visit to Kazakstan on September 22-25, where there is a sizable community of Ukrainians who arrived there as settlers and exiles.

According to Prof. Vasyl Markus, editor of the Encyclopedia of the Ukrainian Diaspora, there are about 800,000 Ukrainians in Kazakstan. The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Prof. Markus said, has had a presence in Kazakstan at least since the middle of the 20th century.

The UGCC currently has a bishop designated as apostolic visitator for Kazakstan and Central Asia, and Ukrainian priests have formed new parishes since independence in 1991.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 6, 2002, No. 1, Vol. LXX

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