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Catholic World News News Feature

RETIREMENT SET FOR HEAD OF UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC CHURCH October 30, 1996

by Father Serge Keleher, Keston News Service

On November 14, 1996 Cardinal Myroslav-Ivan Lubachivsky, patriarch (or "major archbishop") of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, will relinquish most of his official duties into the hands of Bishop Lubomyr (Husar), who will thus receive all the practical authority of the head of this Eastern-rite Church.

[The Ukrainian Catholic Church is the largest of all the Eastern-rite churches in union with Rome, with approximately 5 million faithful in Ukraine and around the world. Brutally suppressed during the years of Communist rule in Ukraine, the Church re-emerged fully in 1991, when Cardinal Lubachivsky returned to Ukraine from his exile. As head of the Ukrainian Church, the cardinal was widely identified by his followers as the "patriarch"-- although, despite pleas from the Ukrainian faithful, the Vatican has not formally approved a Ukrainian patriarchate.]

Cardinal Lubachivsky was born in 1914 in Dolyna, Ukraine. He studied at the Greek-Catholic Theological Academy in Lviv when the future Cardinal Iosif Slipyj was rector, at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, and at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and was ordained priest by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky in 1938. After the Second World War he served as a priest in the United States, where he became Metropolitan of Philadelphia in 1979. In 1980 he became Coadjutor to Cardinal Slipyj, and joined him at the Rome-based chancery of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. When Slipyj died in 1984, Archbishop Lubachivsky succeeded him automatically; was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 1985.

Relatively few people took seriously the claim that the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church still existed in the Soviet Union; Lubachivsky had not been a very active man and some observers thought that he was intended to be a purely "nominal" chief of the hierarchy. But he and his close collaborators in Rome continued to organize help for the Church in Ukraine.

During the Gorbachev period, the Chancery in Rome became increasingly important in focusing Catholic attention upon the situation of the Greek-Catholics in Ukraine. As the 1980s wore on, the insistence of the Ukrainian Catholics on the restoration of legal rights to their Church grew ever stronger; despite all the efforts of the Soviet Government and the Moscow Patriarchate, this insistence in the end was irresistible. Legal recognition was restored to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church on December 1, 1989, and the Church whose very existence had been denied rose from the catacombs with an archbishop, nine bishops, hundreds of priests and nuns, and millions of faithful.

Just over a year later, in March 1991, Cardinal Lubachivsky returned to Ukraine, after more than fifty years, to celebrate Holy Week and Easter in Saint George's Cathedral and to reorganize the central administration of his Church. He was already old, and by nature rather timid, and found life in the crumbling Soviet society difficult.

In 1992, Cardinal Lubachivsky presided over the return of the mortal remains of his predecessor, Cardinal (or-- as we was acknowledged in Ukraine-- Patriarch) Iosif Slipyj, who had wished to be buried in Saint George's Cathedral. No fewer than two million people waited outside the cathedral in endless queues to pray before Patriarch Iosif's coffin; the lying-in-state took seven full days.

Continuing the ecumenical imperative of his two predecessors, Metropolitan Andrei, Cardinal Lubachivsky undertook several important ecumenical initiatives. Perhaps the best known is his pastoral letter On Christian Unity. Actually a small book, this pastoral letter is an instruction to the faithful in Ukraine and elsewhere about the ecumenical movement and its significance for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. The cardinal has given his blessing and support to the restoration of the historic relations between the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.

Keston College, now Keston Institute, is proud to reflect on the support we gave to Patriarch Iosif and to Cardinal Lubachivsky, beginning at a time when there were not many to encourage the struggle for Ukrainian Greek-Catholic religious freedom. From the very beginnings of Keston College, Keston's Michael Bourdeaux was in touch with Ukrainian Greek-Catholic faithful in their efforts to sustain the Pochaiv Monastery against Soviet attempts to close it. As the years went by, Keston paid increasing attention to the special situation of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, which was the world's largest "illegal" religious body. In Keston's analysis, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church was the litmus test of Soviet claims to freedom of religion; until this Church was free, no religious body in the USSR could be genuinely free.

Since Cardinal Lubachivsky's return to Ukraine, Keston has continued to give support to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Our staff researcher visits Ukraine regularly to assist the bishops, clergy, monastics, and lay activists and has been actively involved in publishing. We have assisted and directed efforts at sending humanitarian assistance, which is desperately needed and is best channelled through the Church. And we are actively involved in developing archival materials and eyewitness accounts of the persecution.