20th century: persecution and internationalization[edit]

Main article: The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the USSR

Bishops of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. St. George's Cathedral, Lviv, Lviv 12.1927.
Sitting: bp.Hryhory Khomyshyn, Metropolitan Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky, bp. Nykyta
Budka, bp. Josaphat Kotsylovsky.

Stryi. The relics of the blessed of Josaphat Kotsylovsky.JPG

After World War I, Ukrainian Greek Catholics found themselves under the governance of the
nations of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Under the previous century of
Austrian rule, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church attained such a strong Ukrainian national
character that in interwar Poland, the Greek Catholics of Galicia were seen by the nationalist
Polish and Catholic state as even less patriotic than the Orthodox Volhynians. Extending its
Polonisation policies to its Eastern Territories, the Polish authorities sought to weaken the
UGCC. In 1924, following a visit with Ukrainian Catholic believers in North America and
western Europe, the head of the UGCC was initially denied reentry to Lww (the Polish
name at the time for Lviv), only being allowed back after a considerable delay. Polish Roman
Catholic priests, led by their Latin bishops, began missionary work among Greek Catholics;
and administrative restrictions were placed on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.[8]
After World War II Ukrainian Catholics came under the rule of Communist Poland and the
hegemony of the Soviet Union. With only a few clergy invited to attend, a synod was
convened in Lviv (Lvov), which revoked the Union of Brest. Officially all of the church
property was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate,[9]
Most of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic clergy went underground. This catacomb church was
strongly supported by its diaspora in the Western Hemisphere. Emigration to the U.S. and
Canada, which had begun in the 1870s, increased after World War II.
In the winter of 1944-45, Ukrainian Greek Catholic clergy were summoned to 'reeducation'
sessions conducted by the NKVD. Near the end of the war in Europe, the state media began
an anti-Ukrainian-Catholic campaign.[10] The creation of the community in 1596 was

discredited in publications, which went to great pains to try to prove the Church was
conducting activities directed against Ukrainians in the first half of the 20th century.[10]
In 1945 Soviet authorities arrested, deported, and sentenced to forced-labor camps in Siberia
and elsewhere the church's metropolitan Yosyf Slipyi and nine other Greek Catholic bishops,
as well as hundreds of clergy and leading lay activists. In Lviv alone, 800 priests were
imprisoned.[10] All the above-mentioned bishops and significant numbers of clergymen died in
prisons, concentration camps, internal exile, or soon after their release during the post-Stalin
thaw.[11] The exception was metropolitan Yosyf Slipyi who, after 18 years of imprisonment
and persecution, was released thanks to the intervention of Pope John XXIII, Slipyi took
refuge in Rome, where he received the title of Major Archbishop of Lviv, and became a
cardinal in 1965.[11]

The center dome of St. Joseph the Betrothed Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Chicago,
Illinois[12]
The clergy who joined the Russian Orthodox Church were spared the large-scale persecution
of religion that occurred elsewhere in the country (see Religion in the Soviet Union). In the
city of Lviv, only one church was closed (at a time when many cities in the rest of Ukraine
did not have a working church). Moreover, the western dioceses of Lviv-Ternopil and IvanoFrankivsk were the largest in the USSR and contained the majority of the Russian Orthodox
Church's cloisters (particularly convents, of which there were seven in Ukrainian SSR but
none in Russia). Orthodox canon law was also relaxed on the clergy allowing them to shave
beards (a practice uncommon to Orthodoxy) and conduct liturgy in Ukrainian as opposed to
Church Slavonic.
The Ukrainian Catholics continued to exist underground for decades and were the subject of
vigorous attacks in the state media. The clergy gave up public exercise of their clerical duties,
but secretly provided services for many lay people.[10] Many priests took up civilian
professions and celebrated the sacraments in private. The identities of former priests could

have been known to the Soviet police who regularly watched them, interrogated them and put
fines on them, but stopped short of arrest unless their activities went beyond a small circle of
people.[10] New secretly ordained priests were often treated more harshly.[10]
The church even grew during this time, and this was acknowledged by Soviet sources. The
first secretary of the Lvov Komsomol, Oleksiy Babiychuk, claimed:
in this oblast, particularly in the rural areas, a large number of the population adheres to
religious practices, among them a large proportion of youth. In the last few years, the activity
of the Uniates [Ukrainian Catholics] has grown, that of representatives of the Uniates as well
as former Uniate priests; there are even reverberations to renew the overt activity of this
Church.[10]
After Stalin died, Ukrainian Catholics hoped this would lead to better conditions for
themselves, but such hopes were dashed in the late 1950s when the authorities arrested even
more priests and unleashed a new wave of anti-Catholic propaganda.[10] Secret ordinations
occurred in exile. Secret theological seminaries in Ternopol and Kolomyia were reported in
the Soviet press in the 1960s when their organizers were arrested.[10] In 1974 a clandestine
convent was uncovered in Lviv.[10]
During the Soviet era, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church did flourish throughout the
Ukrainian diaspora. Cardinal Yosyf Slipyi was jailed as a dissident but named in pectore (in
secret) a cardinal in 1949; he was freed in 1963 and was the subject of an extensive campaign
to have him named as a patriarch, which met with strong support as well as controversy. Pope
Paul VI demurred, but compromised with the creation of a new title of major archbishop
(assigned to Yosyf Slipyi on 23 December 1963[13] ), with a jurisdiction roughly equivalent to
that of a patriarch in an Eastern church. This title has since passed to Myroslav Ivan
Lubachivsky in 1984 and thereafter to Lubomyr Husar in 2000 and Sviatoslav Shevchuk in
2011; this title has also been granted to the heads of three other Eastern Catholic Churches.
In 1968, when the Ukrainian Catholic Church was legalized in Czechoslovakiaa large scale
campaign was launched to harass recalcitrant clergy who remained illegal.[10] These clergy
were subject to interrogations, fines and beatings. In January 1969 the KGB arrested an
underground Catholic bishop named Vasyl Velychkovsky and two Catholic priests, and
sentenced them to three years of imprisonment for breaking anti-religious legislation.[10]
Activities that could lead to arrest included holding religious services, educating children as
Catholics, performing baptisms, conducting weddings or funerals, hearing confessions or
giving the last rites, copying religious materials, possessing prayer books, possessing icons,
possessing church calendars, possessing religious books or other sacred objects.[10]
Conferences were held to discuss how to perfect the methodology in combatting Ukrainian
Catholicism in the West Ukraine.[10]
At times the Ukrainian Catholics attempted to employ legal channels to have their
community recognized by the state. In 19561957 there were petitions to the proper
authorities to request for churches to be opened. More petitions were sent in the 60s and 70s,
all of which were refused. In 1976, a priest named Volodymyr Prokipov was arrested for
presenting such a petition to Moscow.[10] The response to these petitions by the state had been
to sharpen attacks against the community.

In 1984 a samizdat Chronicle of the Catholic Church began to be published by Ukrainian

Catholics. The founder of the group behind this publication, Yosef Terelya, was arrested in
1985 and sentenced to seven years imprisonment and five years of exile.[10] His successor,
Vasely Kobryn, was arrested and sentenced to three years of exile.[10]
The Solidarity movement in Poland and Pope John Paul II supported the Ukrainian Catholics.
The state media attacked John Paul II. The antireligious journal Liudyna i Svit (Man and the
World) published in Kiev wrote:
Proof that the Church is persistently striving to strengthen its political influence in socialist
countries is witnessed by the fact that Pope John Paul II gives his support to the emigre
hierarchy of the so-called Ukrainian Catholic Church . . .. The current tactic of Pope John
Paul II and the Roman Curia lies in the attempts to strengthen the position of the Church in
all socialist countries as they have done in Poland, where the Vatican tried to raise the status
of the Catholic Church to a state within a state. In the last few years, the Vatican has paid
particular attention to the question of Catholicism of the Slavonic nations. This is poignantly
underscored by the Pope when he states that he is not only a Pope of Polish origin, but the
first Slavic Pope, and he will pay particular attention to the Christianization of all Slavic
nations.[10]
By the late 1980s there was a shift in the Soviet government's attitude towards religion. At
the height of Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalization reforms the Ukrainian Greek Catholic
Church was allowed again to function officially in December 1989.[9] But then it found itself
largely in disarray with the nearly all of its pre-1946 parishes and property lost to the
Orthodox faith. The church, actively supported by nationalist organisations such as Rukh and
later the UNA-UNSO, took an uncompromising stance towards the return of its lost property
and parishes. According to a Greek-Catholic priest, "even if the whole village is now
Orthodox and one person is Greek Catholic, the church [building] belongs to that Catholic
because the church was built by his grandparents and great-grandparents."[14] The weakened
Soviet authorities were unable to pacify the situation, and most of the parishes in Halychyna
came under the control of the Greek-Catholics during the events of a large scale interconfessional rivalry that was often accompanied by violent clashes of the faithful provoked
by their religious and political leadership.[15] These tensions led to a rupture of relations
between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Vatican.