Ukrainian Catholic University expands its campus in Lviv

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

LVIV - Four years ago, Frenchman Didier Rance stood at a 42-acre site in suburban Lviv with the Rev. Bohdan Prach, the rector of what was called Lviv Seminary at the time.

"There were mainly goats and grass," said Mr. Rance, president of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) in France. "But he said in four years, we'll have a seminary open here. It was a dream, of course."

On August 28, Mr. Rance revisited the former pasture with 21 of his fellow countrymen to admire the dream of Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians realized: the 123,785-square-foot Holy Spirit Seminary and Church of the Holy Spirit.

"As a Frenchman, I can only be impressed by the growth of the Church, the youth and the number of seminarians," said Jacques Ouvrier, 74, a retired aerospace employee who made significant financial donations to the construction.

Mr. Ouvrier was among more than 1,000 Christians and 14 Ukrainian Catholic bishops who worshipped at a divine liturgy, led by Archbishop Major of Kyiv-Halych Lubomyr Husar, to bless the seminary and consecrate the church.

"There will come a time when we will have all the necessary space and structures, and we will have everything to lead a church life," Cardinal Husar said in his sermon. "But the most important thing is that we never try to do anything without holy God."

The Holy Spirit Seminary and Church of the Holy Spirit form the architectural and social focal point of the Ukrainian Catholic University's (UCU) ever-expanding Center of Theological Education and Formation campus on Khutorivka Street.

The center is a milestone in Ukraine's higher educational system, making the UCU the largest theological institution of higher education in the country. The center was western Ukraine's largest construction project during the last four years, university officials said.

The campus' other main structure, the nearby 59,200-square-foot Faculty of Theology and Philosophy building and library, will open its doors in January 2006, said Dr. Jeffrey Wills, UCU vice-rector.

Several monastic orders, including the Studite Fathers and the Redemptorist Fathers, will build places of study for their students during the next decade, he said.

UCU Rector Father Borys Gudziak, Ph.D., said the growing university can become a leading European theological center.

"There is enormous potential, with the closing of theological faculties in Western Europe and with the old-fashioned approach to academic theology to the east and to the north of us, for Lviv to become a leading European theological center during the next 10 years," Father Gudziak said.

The fall semester began on September 1, but the academy's approximately 260 seminarians won't be able to live in the new seminary until government inspectors give approval, Dr. Prach said.

Ever since the Theological Academy was reopened in 1990, seminarians had been living in derelict, cramped buildings in Rudno, a village on Lviv's outskirts.

To mark the completion of the new center, Catholics led a procession on August 27 from the old seminary building on Kopernik (Copernicus) Street to the Khutorivka Street campus. They prayed at both locations.

The new accommodations

The two-story Holy Spirit Seminary has the shape of a closed half-circle, forming a large central courtyard where the five-domed Church of the Holy Spirit can accommodate about 200 worshippers.

All the center's buildings have a façade of white plaster walls and brick-colored Onduline tile roof, an architectural style currently popular in Europe.

The seminary provides accommodations for students' social and spiritual lives such as residence rooms, study and meeting halls, gymnasiums and classrooms.

Seminarians will receive their five-year theological instruction in the adjacent faculty building, alongside lay students and even seminarians of other confessions.

About 260 seminarians and 100 lay theology students and nuns will study at the faculty building once it is open, according to the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation's 2003 Annual Report.

The seminary accepted an unprecedented 70 students in its freshman class this year, Dr. Prach said, all of whom met high standards.

However, enrollment won't necessarily continue to increase because the university is focused on quality not quantity, Dr. Wills said.

Dr. Prach oversaw the complex's architectural design and managed construction, all the while serving as the seminary rector.

He received tremendous praise from his colleagues, including Cardinal Husar, for directing the center's construction thus far. Father Gudziak pointed out that the Polish-born rector also coordinated Pope John Paul II's historic 2001 visit to Ukraine.

"I would like for the Lviv community to appreciate not only Dr. Prach, but at least these two projects, although he does a lot of other things," Father Gudziak said. "The papal visit greatly raised the image of Ukraine and this seminary and this Theology Center will also do a great deal."

Primary source of funding

The center's primary source of financing was Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a Frankfurt, Germany-based international Catholic charity founded by the Dutch priest Father Werenfried van Straaten in 1947.

An organization that distributes $85.6 million globally every year, ACN has had an exceptional interest in the Ukrainian Catholic Church because of Father Werenfried's close relationship with the former Ukrainian Catholic Patriarch Josyf Slipyj.

They met when Patriarch Slipyj began establishing the UCU in Rome after he left the Soviet Union in 1963. The Theological Academy's first rector spent 18 years in a Siberian concentration camp.

Father Werenfried frequently wrote of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and Patriarch Slipyj in his bulletin, read by 700,000 readers worldwide, said Eva-Maria Kolmann, author of the biography, "Thank you, Father Werenfried." "It was not just a project for him, but a deep heartfelt wish to build up the seminary," Ms. Kolmann said.

When Father Werenfried died just a few weeks after his 90th birthday in April 2003, Ukrainian Catholic priests were present at his funeral and held a panakhyda in his honor.

ACN contributed about $4.9 million to the center's construction, according to Mark Fromager, an ACN spokesman. The French donated more than half of that sum.

The seminary's construction cost was about $5 million, and the faculty building under construction has cost about $3.1 million so far, estimated Dr. Prach. Once it's eventually completed, the entire center's cost will be about $10 million, estimated Dr. Wills.

Visiting donors from France and Germany expressed joy over their investment.

"The building is not the most important thing here," said Antonia Willemsen, the secretary general of ACN until June of this year. "The seminary is only a shell. Most important is the 220 seminarians who will fill this building."

The Chicago-based Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation also was a major contributor to the center, however both foundation and UCU officials weren't able to say how much of its funds were used. Self Reliance New York Federal Credit Union of New York donated $100,000 to the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation in 2004, said Bohdan Kekish, the credit union's president.

However, Father Gudziak estimated that the Ukrainian diaspora of North America contributed $150,000 to the center's construction.

The visiting Germans and French were particularly enthusiastic about Holy Spirit Seminary because they said they've seen their own seminaries become depleted during the past several decades.

Western European seminaries are so depleted that they have become a burden to the Church, Ms. Willemsen said.

"So many nations, particularly the Germans and the French, are almost jealous that these churches have been blessed with these seminarians," Mr. Fromager commented.

Former students attend ceremonies

Besides foreign donors, among those in attendance were students of the Theological Academy during World War II, when it was still located on Kopernik Street in Lviv.

Tykhon Leschuk attended the Lviv Seminary in 1944-1945 when Patriarch Josyf, then still archbishop of Lviv, was rector. When Archbishop Slipyj walked the halls of the old seminary, he had an awesome physical and spiritual aura about him, Mr. Leschuk said.

"He had an exceptional presence, with a lot of knowledge, morality and intellect," Mr. Leschuk said. "He had such an influence on his peers that he was among the best role models anyone of us had known."

By the time Soviet Communists had taken control of Lviv in 1945, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had either killed or deported all the Ukrainian Catholic bishops to Siberia. Himself a former seminarian, Stalin decided to spare the students from execution and sent them to Siberia.

Mr. Leschuk served six years at a labor camp in the Kurile Islands, located in the far eastern USSR between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean.

Former UCU Rector Father Ivan Muzychka said the new campus can't even compare with the buildings in Rome. "Rome was the realization of hopes," Father Muzychka said. "It was a big deal. But this is the realization."

Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and Father Slipyj reorganized the Lviv Seminary as the Greek-Catholic Theological Academy in 1928. The Soviet Communists liquidated it by 1945.

The Church re-established it in 1994 as the Lviv Theological Academy, and the Congregation for Catholic Education accredited the UCU as meeting international standards in 1998.

No government recognition

While the university offers undergraduate and post-graduate studies for its students, the Ukrainian government doesn't recognize it as an accredited institution of higher education because its curriculum is theologically based. As a result, UCU students have no discounts on transportation enjoyed by other students and can't register as students at hospitals for treatment.

Most importantly, their well-earned degrees aren't recognized by the Ukrainian government.

"They study for a non-existent discipline," Father Gudziak said of his theology students.

On February 17 President Yushchenko embraced the study of theology and promised a representative in the Presidential Secretariat.

"For eight years, we have systematically fought for our rights," Father Guziak said. "This is an injustice. These are young people who are talented, who translate Plato texts and don't expect any material rewards and who make a personal sacrifice to serve. But the government isn't interested in their service."

The Kairos conference

The same day he blessed the seminary, Cardinal Husar delivered the opening remarks to Kairos, a two-day conference to allow graduate students in the Ukrainian Catholic Church to organize, motivate and prepare themselves to lead the Church in the future.

More than 250 Ukrainian Catholic graduate and post-graduate students attended Kairos, which means "It's Time" in Greek. Most of them were returning to their graduate studies abroad following the conference.

In his opening remarks to Kairos, Cardinal Husar told the Kairos participants that the new campus gives the Church unprecedented facilities that require its students to make the most of them and work even harder.

The Ukrainian Catholic Church's greatest current need is access to theological books and academic sources, particularly translations of these materials, Cardinal Husar pointed out. This will allow for deeper studies of the Bible and provide a solid foundation for future research, he said.

The major archbishop also stressed the need for the global Ukrainian Catholic Church to retain its members in countries other than Ukraine, particularly in the West.

The Church needs to enable these parishioners to understand that the faith their grandfathers brought to the new continent grows and lives with full, spiritual treasures which they can't find in other Churches, Cardinal Husar said. Therefore, an increased understanding of theology will enable the Church to understand its spiritual treasure, he added.

The Church's other key responsibility is to help the Western Churches understand the Eastern Churches, and vice versa.

"Many see us as a bridge between East and West," Cardinal Husar said. "The job of a bridge is for people to walk upon it." Therefore, the Ukrainian Catholic Church has the ability to be an intermediary between the West and the East "so that people stop fearing one another."

Cardinal Husar made these remarks a week after Russian Orthodox believers held protests condemning the transfer of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church's headquarters from Lviv to Kyiv.

Throughout the day's events, numerous Catholics repeated the verse, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of future Christians." Mr. Rance pointed out that Lviv was the first place where Pope John Paul II declared that the 20th century was the century of martyrs.

"All of Ukraine's suffering is bearing fruit," Mr. Rance said. "And it is a grace from God that we can help. We have received more than we gave."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 11, 2005, No. 37, Vol. LXXIII

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