Reunited cousins remember Bishop Vasyl Velychkovsky (07/16/06)

Reunited cousins remember Bishop Vasyl Velychkovsky

by Peter T. Woloschuk

BOSTON - "Having a saint in the family is a tremendous honor and a heavy responsibility," said Christina Dawydowycz Gamota of Lexington, Mass., as she and her cousin Dr. Tatiana Nikolic of Zagreb, Croatia, caught up on family history and news and talked about their great uncle Bishop Vasyl Vsevolod Velychkovsky, CSsR, of Lutsk, who died in Winnipeg in 1973 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II during his visit to Ukraine in June 2001.

The two cousins had met briefly in Zagreb in the early 1990s, but this was their first opportunity to really get to know each other. Dr. Nikolic had come to North America to attend a medical conference in Toronto and then took the opportunity to visit family and friends in Buffalo, N.Y., Boston, New York City and Washington.

"Our family today, like many Ukrainian families, is scattered all over the world," Dr. Nikolic said, "and we have branches in Canada, the United States, Argentina, Belgium, Croatia and Ukraine. We trace our roots to three old Galician priestly families, the Dawydowyczes, the Teodorovyches and the Velychkovskys, who have provided the Ukrainian Catholic Church with priests and sisters for more than 400 years."

"Priests from our family have served all over western Ukraine, in Canada and in the United States as both eparchial clergy and in the Basilian and Redemptorist religious orders," she continued, "and the nuns in our family in both the Basilian and Redemptorist orders have also served in western Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Belgium and the United States and, in many instances, were ihumenas of their monasteries. In fact, the first group of Basilian sisters to come to the United States was led by one of my cousins, Mother Josephata Teodorovych."

"The family has a history of dedication to the Ukrainian Catholic Church and there was even a tradition that when one of the priestly members of the family died his wife would enter the convent," Mrs. Gamota added.

Dr. Nikolic went on: "My grandmother was Bishop Velychkovsky's sister, and their father was a priest in Stanyslaviv. She met my grandfather in Lviv while he was studying architecture at the university. He was a Serb from Zagreb and converted to Ukrainian Catholicism in order to marry my grandmother. After he completed his studies, the two settled in Zagreb. They continued to speak Ukrainian among themselves, and they taught my father and the rest of the family as well."

"My grandparents were very pious and attended liturgy daily, and each one took time for meditation and said the rosary every morning and evening," Dr. Nikolic said. "They also maintained contact with Ukraine and followed the tragic fate of the Church and of my great uncle very closely. When my great uncle was in Vorkuta both my grandmother and my father petitioned the Soviet leaders and the Supreme Soviet for his pardon and release, and repeatedly indicated their desire to have him with them in Zagreb."

"My father is also a doctor and was the head of his department at the University of Zagreb medical school, and he used his position as much as possible to work for my great uncle's release," Dr. Nikolic recalled.

"I was only 4 when my family got word that Uncle Vasya had been released and was on his way to Zagreb. I remember that my father had to go to the airport to collect our famous relative and I remember his flowing beard and his kind voice," she said.

"His eyes were always tearing up and I remember my grandmother telling me that Uncle Vasya had been tortured and that he had been injected with chemicals to weaken him and even to cause a premature death. It was said in the family that the Soviets released Uncle Vasya after they had destroyed his health because they didn't want a martyr on their hands and yet they also didn't want him to live too long in the West so that he could be a witness against them."

"Uncle Vasya stayed with us a few weeks," Dr. Nikolic continued, "and then my father accompanied him by train to Rome, where he spent time with Cardinal [Josyf] Slipyj before moving on to Winnipeg, where he was the guest of his fellow Redemptorist, Metropolitan [Maxim] Hermaniuk. When Uncle Vasya was beatified by the pope in Lviv my family received a special invitation from the Vatican to attend the ceremony. I have been to Lviv several times since and I have also seen a memorial plate that the Lviv city government put on one of the buildings where Uncle Vasya lived in his honor."

Bishop Velychkovsky was born on June 1, 1903, in Stanislaviv and educated there. When he was 15 he joined the Ukrainian Galician Army (Ukrainska Halytska Armiya) and served during the war for the independence of western Ukraine. He joined the Redemptorists in 1920 and completed his studies at the Theological Academy in Lviv.

He made his final profession and was also ordained by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky in 1925 and was assigned as an instructor at the Redemptorist Minor Seminary in Zboiska. He conducted missions throughout Halychyna at the same time. In 1935 he was appointed superior of the Redemptorists in Stanyslaviv and in 1942 he was named to the same position in Ternopil.

Father Velychkovsky was arrested in Ternopil in April 1945 after organizing a mass march of some 20,000 faithful who prayed the rosary and protested Soviet policies. He was sent to Kyiv for trial and was sentenced to death. After several months on death row, his sentence was commuted to 10 years of exile and hard labor as a miner in Vorkuta. He was released in 1955 and allowed to return to Lviv.

In 1958 he was secretly nominated a bishop by the Vatican and it wasn't until 1963 when he received a call from then Metropolitan Slipyj to immediately come to Moscow before the latter's release to Rome that he was secretly consecrated by Slipyj in his Moscow hotel room.

Bishop Velychkovsky returned to Lviv and continued to serve as an underground bishop until he was rearrested in 1969 and sentenced to three years of hard labor in Kommunarsk. At the end of his term he was released, forbidden to return to Ukraine, and almost immediately sent to Zagreb. After short stays in Zagreb and Rome, Bishop Velychkovsky permanently settled in Winnipeg, where he died the following June.

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The Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), the international Catholic cable network, released an hourlong documentary on the life of Bishop Velychkovsky which first aired on June 22. Further information can be obtained on the network's website, www.ewtn.com.

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