Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Metropolis of all Ruthenia

The Ruthenian Uniate Church was created with the Union of Brest in 1595/1596, yet its roots go back to the very beginning of Christianity in the Mediaeval Slavic state of Ruthenia. Byzantine missionaries exercised decisive influence in the area. The 9th-century mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Great Moravia had particular importance as their work allowed the spread of worship in the Old Church Slavonic language. The Byzantine-Greek influence continued, particularly with the official adoption of Byzantine rites by Prince Vladimir I of Kiev in 988 when there was established the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Metropolis of Kiev and all Ruthenia. Later at the time of the Great Schism (ca 1054) the Ruthenian (Rusyn) Church took sides and remained Orthodox.

Following the devastating Mongol invasion of Ruthenia and sack of Kiev in 1240, Metropolitan Maximus of Kiev moved to the town of Vladimir-on-Klyazma in 1299. In 1303 on petition of Ruthenia kings from the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia (Ruthenia), Patriarch Athanasius I of Constantinople created a separate Metropolis of Halych that included western parishes of the original Metropolis of Kiev and all Ruthenia. The new metropolis did not last for long (inconsistently throughout most of the 14th century) and its new Metropolitan Peter of Moscow was consecrated as the Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ruthenia instead of Metropolitan of Halych. Just before his death Peter moved his episcopal see from Vladimir to Moscow. During his reign there was established Metropolitanate of Lithuania in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, while after his death Metropolis of Halych was reestablished as well. In 1445 the Metropolitan Isidore with his see in Moscow joined the Council of Florence and became a papal legate of all Ruthenia and Lithuania. After Isidore suffered prosecutions by local bishops and royalty of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, he was banned away from Muscovy, while the Muscovite princes appointed own Metropolitan Jonah of Moscow without consent of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Because of that Patriarch Gregory III of Constantinople reorganized the Ruthenian Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (until 1569 the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) and its new primates were titled as Metropolitans of Kiev, Halych and all Ruthenia. He appointed Gregory II Bulgarian as the new Uniate primate who in 1470 rejoined the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople under Dionysius I of Constantinople.

Union of Brest

This situation continued for some time, and in the intervening years what is now Western and Central Ukraine came under the rule of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish king Sigismund III Vasa was heavily influenced by the ideals of the Counter-Reformation and wanted to increase the Catholic presence in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the clergy of the Ruthenian lands were ruled from distant Constantinople, and much of the population was loyal to Russian Orthodoxy rather than to the Polish Catholic monarch. Persecution of the Orthodox population grew, and under pressure of Polish authorities the clergy of the Ruthenian Church agreed by the Union of Brest in 1595 to break from the Patriarchate of Constantinopole and unite with the Catholic Church under the authority of the ruler of the Commonwealth, Sigismund III Vasa, in exchange for ending the persecution. The union was not accepted by all the members of the Greek Church in these lands, and marked the creation of separate Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in Ukraine and Belarus. Due to violence, the Metropolitan of the Kievan Greek Catholic Church left Kiev early in the 17th century and settled in Navahrudak (present-day Belarus) and Vilnius in Lithuania.

After the Union

The final step of the full particularity of the Ruthenian Uniate Church was then effected by the development of the middle Ruthenian language into separate Rusyn, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages around 1600 to 1800. With Orthodoxy being largely suppressed during the two centuries of Polish rule, the Greek-Catholic influence on the Ukrainian population was so great that in several oblasts hardly anyone remained Orthodox.

After the partition of Poland, the formerly Greek-Catholic territory was mostly divided between Russia and Austria. The portion which came under Russian rule, included Right-bank Ukraine and modern Belarus, while dioceses of Lviv, Kholm, and Peremyshl (Eastern Galicia) came under Austrian rule. In the easternmost areas of Podolia the population mainly reverted to Orthodoxy. Initially, the Russian authorities were extremely tolerant of the Greek-Catholic church and allowed it to function without restraint (calling adherents Basilians). However the clergy soon split into pro-Catholic and pro-Russian, with the former tending to convert to Latin Rite Catholicism, whilst the latter group, led by Bishop Iosif Semashko (1798–1868) and firmly rejected by the ruling Greek-Catholic synod remained largely controlled by the pro-Polish clergy with the Russian authorities largely refusing to interfere. The situation changed abruptly following Russia's successful suppression of the 1831 Polish uprising, aimed at overthrowing Russian control of the Polish territories. As the uprising was actively supported by the Greek-Catholic church, a crackdown on the Church occurred immediately. The pro-Latin members of the Synod were removed; and the Church began to disintegrate, with its parishes in Volhynia reverting to Orthodoxy, including the 1833 transfer of the famous Pochaiv Lavra. In 1839 the Synod of Polotsk (in modern-day Belarus), under the leadership of Bishop Semashko, dissolved the Greek-Catholic church in the Russian Empire, and all its property was transferred to the Orthodox state church. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia says that in what was then known as 'Little Russia' (now Ukraine), the pressure of the Russian Government "utterly wiped out" Greek Catholicism, and "some 7,000,000 of the Uniats there were compelled, partly by force and partly by deception, to become part of the Greek Orthodox Church".

The dissolution of the Greek-Catholic Church in Russia was completed in 1875 with the abolition of the Eparchy of Kholm.

19th century: West Ukrainian period

Elimination of Ruthenian Catholicism within the Russian Empire began early in the 19th century. In 1803 the Pope of Rome granted the transfer of the quasi-patriarchal powers of the Major-Archiepiscopate of Kiev/Halych and all Rus to the Metropolitan of Lviv (Lemberg) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Suffragan sees included Ivano-Frankivsk (then called Stanislav) and Przemyśl. By the end of the century, those remaining faithful to this church began emigrating to the U.S., Canada, and Brazil.

The territory received by Austria-Hungary in the partition of Poland included Halychyna (modern Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and parts of Ternopil oblasts). Here the Greek-Catholic Ruthenian (Ukrainian) peasantry had been largely under Polish Roman Catholic domination. The Austrians granted equal freedom of worship to the Greek-Catholic Church and removed Polish influence. They also mandated that Uniate seminarians receive a formal higher education (previously, priests had been educated informally by their fathers), and organized institutions in Vienna and Lviv that would serve this function. This led to the appearance, for the first time, of a large, educated class within the Ukrainian population in Halychyna. It also engendered a fierce sense of loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty. When Polish rebels briefly took control of Lviv in 1809, they demanded that the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Anton Anhelovych, substitute Napoleon's name in the Divine Liturgy for that of Austrian Emperor Francis II. Anhelovych refused, and was imprisoned. When the Austrians retook control over Lviv, Anhelovych was awarded the cross of Leopold by the Emperor.

As a result of the reforms, over the next century the Greek-Catholic Church in Austrian Halychnya ceased being a puppet of foreign interests and became the primary cultural force within the Ukrainian community. Most independent native Ukrainian cultural and political trends (such as Rusynophilia, Russophilia and later Ukrainophilia) emerged from within the ranks of the Greek-Catholic Church clergy. The participation of Greek Catholic priests or their children in western Ukrainian cultural and political life was so great that western Ukrainians were accused of wanting to create a theocracy in western Ukraine by their Polish rivals. Among the political trends that emerged, the Christian social movement was particularly linked to the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Many people saw the Austrians as having saved the Ukrainians and their Church from the Poles, though it was the Poles who set into motion the Greek-Catholic cast of their church.

20th century: persecution and internationalization

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 Lwów (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.

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, 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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 Ivano-Frankivsk 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. 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. New secretly ordained priests were often treated more harshly.

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.

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. 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. In 1974 a clandestine convent was uncovered in Lviv.

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 ), 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. 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.

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. Conferences were held to discuss how to perfect the methodology in combatting Ukrainian Catholicism in the West Ukraine.

At times the Ukrainian Catholics attempted to employ legal channels to have their community recognized by the state. In 1956–1957 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. 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. His successor, Vasely Kobryn, was arrested and sentenced to three years of exile.

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.

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. 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." 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 inter-confessional rivalry that was often accompanied by violent clashes of the faithful provoked by their religious and political leadership. These tensions led to a rupture of relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Vatican.

Modern times

Currently the church has between 3 and 5 million supporters in Ukraine. Numerous surveys conducted since the late 1990s consistently show that between 6% and 8% of Ukraine's total population, or 9.4% to 12.6% of the country's religious believers, identify themselves as belonging to this Church. Worldwide, the faithful now number some 6 to 10 million, forming the largest particular Catholic Church, after the majority Latin Rite Church. The demographics of Ukraine show that the Greek Catholic Church is increasing at the expense of the majority Orthodox Church, due to higher birth rates and lower death rates among its members.

According to a 2015 survey, followers of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church make up 8.1% of the total population (excluding Crimea) and form the majority in 3 oblasts:

Today, most Ukrainian Catholic Churches have moved away from Church Slavonic and use Ukrainian. Many churches also offer liturgies in the official language of the country the Church is in, for example, German in Germany or English in Canada; however, some parishes continue to celebrate the liturgy in Slavonic even today, and services in a mix of languages are not unusual.

In the early first decade of the 21st century, the major see of the Ukrainian Catholic Church was transferred to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. The enthronement of the new head of the church Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk took place there on 27 March 2011 at the cathedral under construction on the left bank. On 18 August 2013, the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ was dedicated and solemnly opened.

De-Latinization and protest

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church previously embarked on a campaign of de-Latinization reforms. These include the removal of the stations of the cross, the rosary and the monstrance from their liturgy and parishes. In 2001 a priest, Vasyl Kovpak, and a small group of followers opposed to certain policies (such as de-latinisation) and ecumenism of the UGCC hierarchy, organized themselves as the Priestly Society of Saint Josaphat. The PSSJ possesses close ties with the Latin Rite Traditionalist Catholic Society of Saint Pius X, which rejects and condemns certain actions and policies of both Husar and the Pope. On November 21, 2007 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith excommunicated Kovpak.

Critics claim that the SSJK's liturgical practice favours severely abbreviated services and imported Roman Catholic devotions over the traditional and authentic practices of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Proponents counter that these symbols and rituals, influenced long ago by their Polish Roman Catholic neighbors, have been practiced by Ukrainian Greek Catholics for centuries. To deny them today is to deprive the people of a part of sacred heritage which they have learned to regard as their own.

In 2008, a group of Basilian priests at the Pidhirtsi monastery declared that four of them had been consecrated bishops without permission of the Pope or the Major Archbishop. The "Pidhirtsi fathers" had opposed de-latinisation, liberal theology, and the ecumenical approach of the hierarchy. Excommunicated in 2008, in 2009 they constituted themselves as the Ukrainian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church.

Administration

Note: The Eparchy of Mukachevo belongs to the Ruthenian Catholic Church rather than the Ukrainian Greek church.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church moved its administrative center from Western Ukrainian Lviv to a new cathedral in Kiev on 21 August 2005. The title of the head of the UGCC was changed from The Major Archbishop of Lviv to The Major Archbishop of Kyiv and Halych.

The Patriarchal Curia of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church is an organ of Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the UGCC, Major Archbishop of Kyiv and Halych, which coordinates and promotes the common activity of the UGCC in Ukraine to make influence on society in different spheres: education, policy, culture, etc. The Curia develops action of the Church's structures, enables relations and cooperation with other Churches and major public institutions in religious and social areas for implementation of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church through everyday life.

The current eparchies and other territorial jurisdictions of the church are:

* Directly subject to the Holy See

As of 2014, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is estimated to have 4,468,630 faithful, 39 bishops, 3993 parishes, 3008 diocesan priests, 399 religious-order priests, 818 men religious, 1459 women religious, 101 deacons, and 671 seminarians.

Prison Ministry of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church

In contemporary Ukraine prison ministry of chaplains does not exist de jure. The prison pastoral care was at the very heart of the spirituality of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church throughout her history. Prison Pastoral of the UGCC, though it is still very young, is taking successive steps to integrity. It was restored in 1990 after the Church, formerly forbidden, emerged from the underground. Pastoral care has grown steadily from several establishments in the Western Part of Ukraine to more than 40 penal institutions in every region of the country. Since 2001 the UGCC is the co-founder of the Ukrainian Interdenominational Christian Mission "Spiritual and Charitable Care in Prisons" including twelve Churches and Denominations. This Mission is a part of the World Association of Prison Ministry. The most active prison chaplains are the Redemptorist Fathers.

In the year 2006 Lubomyr Husar established in the Patriarchal Curia of the UGCC the Department for Pastoral Care in the Armed Forces and in the Penitentiary System of Ukraine. This structure implements a general management of Prison Ministry. The chief of the Department is Most Rev. Michael Koltun, Bishop of Sokal and Zhovkva. The head of the Unit for penitentiary pastoral care is Rev. Constantin Panteley, who is directly responsible for coordination of activity in this realm. He is in direct contact with 37 priests in 12 eparchies who have been assigned responsibility for prison pastoral care. Those pastors ensure regular attendance of penitentiary facilities, investigatory isolators and prisons.

Department of the UGCC for Pastoral Care in the Armed Forces and in the Penitentiary System of Ukraine is provisory structure till both chaplaincies will be quite ripe. Prison Pastoral Care is appealed to facilitate transition from the punitive system neglecting human dignity to correctional system cherishing penitentiary idea. Our mission is to serve the inmates in the national penitentiaries with Christian charity and reconciliation through extensive ministry to the spiritual and physical needs of prisoners of any creed, sex, age, religious faith, or nationality. The priority directions of the ministry are sermon, catechetics, administration of the sacraments for inmates, assistance and support of communication with family, spiritual support of the prison stuff, engagement of lay people in ministry.

The Sunday of the Prodigal Son, which every year falls up to date two weeks before the Great Lent, Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has defined as a Day of special attention to Catholic Prison Ministry. The Gospel Reading on this Sunday (Luke 15:11-32) lays out one of the most important themes of the Lenten season: the history of falling into a sin, realization of one's sinfulness, the road to repentance, and finally reconciliation, each of which is illustrated in the course of the parable. The UGCC Synod invokes to remember in prayers workers of the Penitentiary system of Ukraine, who perform difficult tasks, because every day they are near of broken human destinies. This Sunday declared as a day to remember in prayers and support chaplains and volunteers, who work with great dedication to provide spiritual support for prisoners, helping them to step on the right path.

The UGCC Prison Ministry has many directions of development in compatibility with other missions of the Church. It is currently carrying out on the base of "The Agreement for cooperation of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church with the State Penal Department of Ukraine", which offers many possibilities. Today pastoral ministry is regularly carried out in penitentiary facilities # 3, 13, 27, 30, 40, 41, 44, 47, 48, 50, 55, 57, 63, 110, 112, 120, 124, in correctional centres # 118, 128, 135 in seven investigatory isolators and in three juvenile prisons of Ukraine. In 6 prisons our pastors are able to attend only irregularly.