THE PAPAL VISIT TO UKRAINE / News

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Just seven weeks after the local study of 27 Ukrainian martyrs ended, Pope John Paul II cleared the way for their beatification during his June trip to their homeland.

03.05.2001 (14:38) // Religious Information Service of Ukraine
Source: By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service, 24 April, 2001

Pope clears way for beatification of 27 Ukrainian martyrs

   The Vatican published the decrees recognizing the martyrdom of the 27 members of Ukraine's Eastern-rite church who died at the hands of Nazi invaders and communist occupiers, in Soviet gulags or as the result of their imprisonment.

  The same day, April 24, the Vatican promulgated a decree recognizing the martyrdom of Ruthenian Bishop Teodoro Romzsa, apostolic administrator of Mukacheve, Ukraine, who was killed in 1947. He, too, is expected to be beatified by the pope in late June.

  Officials involved in the cause of the 27 martyrs said completion of the Vatican process within weeks rather than within years of the Ukrainian Catholic Church forwarding the material to Rome is a sign of Pope John Paul's personal desire to beatify the martyrs during his June 23-27 trip.

   Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, told Pope John Paul April 24 that the Ukrainian martyrs ``heroically witnessed their attachment to Christ and to the Roman pontiff during the Second World War and in the following years when the church and the Ukrainian hierarchy were persecuted by the communist regime.''

  ``The recent political changes in Eastern Europe have finally permitted the gathering of proof'' necessary for a declaration of martyrdom, the cardinal said.

  By honoring the new martyrs, Cardinal Saraiva Martins said, the whole church honors the Ukrainian Catholic and Ruthenian communities ``which generated them in the faith and which they served in conditions of extreme suffering to the point of shedding their blood.''

  The Ukrainian martyrs include eight bishops and 15 priests, some of whom were members of religious orders and two of whom were married, as is permitted in the Eastern church. The group also includes three religious women and a layman.

  One of the martyrs, Father Omeljan Kovch, who died in the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland, was a victim of the Nazis. He was arrested by the communists in Przemysl, in what was then Ukraine, in 1941. Released, he was arrested by the Nazis in 1943 for helping Jews flee.

  The first person listed in the cause is Bishop Mykola Charnetsky of Volyn and Pidlyashia. Arrested by the Soviet secret police in 1945 along with all of the other Ukrainian Catholic bishops, he was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. Maltreated and tortured, he was so sick that authorities allowed him to return to Lviv in 1956 to die. Although suffering from his mistreatment, he lived and ministered until 1959.

  A Vatican official said the bishop's reputation for holiness is so great that authorities have to put more dirt on his grave every week because so many pilgrims pray there and take a handful of the soil away with them.

  Basilian Father Severijan Barankyk was arrested by the Soviet secret police in 1941 and imprisoned in Drohobych. When advancing Nazi troops entered the city, they found the prison abandoned by the Soviets but littered with the dead bodies of prisoners.

  Father Barankyk's body was not found. However, the Vatican said, witnesses reported ``that he was boiled and served as soup to other prisoners.''

  Basilian Father Jakym Senkivskyi was arrested the same day as Father Barankyk and taken to the same prison. After the German soldiers arrived, his body was found ``black and bloated,'' as if he, too, had been boiled to death.

  Redemptorist Father Zynovij was arrested in 1941 while preaching a homily. He was martyred by the communists ``in a mock crucifixion against a wall in the Bryhidky prison'' in Lviv, according to the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

  Two of the bishops recognized as martyrs have connections to Canada:

   -- Bishop Vasyl Velychkovsky was arrested in Ukraine in 1945 and condemned to 10 years of forced labor in Siberia. Released in 1955, he went to Lviv, where he clandestinely was ordained a bishop in 1963. Arrested again in 1969, he received a three-year sentence.

   ``Before his release on Jan. 27, 1972, he was injected with an unknown substance by his jailers,'' the Vatican said.

   Already near death, he was released to travel to Rome and then to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he died in 1973.

   -- In 1912 Bishop Mykyta Budka became the first bishop for Ukrainian Catholics in Canada. After 15 years, he was called to Rome, then sent to Lviv in 1928. Arrested with the other Ukrainian Catholic bishops in 1945, he was condemned to eight years of forced labor. He died in 1949 in the hospital of a labor camp in Kazakstan.

  Two of the religious women, St. Joseph Sisters Olha Bida and Leukadia Herasymiv, secretly ministered to the faithful who were without priests because of Soviet persecution. Caught leading prayers at a funeral in 1950, they were arrested and sent to Siberia. They died in the Kharsk prison camp within seven months of each other.

  Among the other causes cleared for beatification at the Vatican April 24 was that of Sister Josaphata Michaelina Hordashevska, co-founder of the Sister Servants of Mary Immaculate, the first nonmonastic Ukrainian Catholic order for women.

  After the April 24 formal recognition of a miracle attributed to her intercession, Pope John Paul is expected to beatify her along with the martyrs during a late June Divine Liturgy in Lviv.

  At a separate Mass in Lviv, the pope is expected to beatify Father Zigmund Gorazdowski, a member of Ukraine's Latin-rite church. The priest, who lived from 1845 to 1920, established homes for the poor, the hungry and the homeless in Western Ukraine and founded the Sisters of St. Joseph.

  The Vatican issued a decree April 24 recognizing a miracle attributed to his intercession, clearing the way for his beatification.

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