I am Ukrainian from my grandfather, great-grandfather. And our church and our holy ritual I love with all my heart devoting to the Lord's affair my whole life. So I know that in this regard I could not be foreign to people who have given their heart and soul for the same cause.
According to the church historian Jaroslav Pelikan, "Arguably, Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky was the most influential figure...in the entire history of the Ukrainian Church in the twentieth century".[3] The Lviv National Museum, founded by Sheptytsky in 1905, now bears his name.
The Information-Resource Center of the Ukrainian Catholic University that was opened in September 2017 also bears his name — The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Center.[4]
Sheptytsky was baptized in the Roman rite at the parish church in Bruchnal (today Ternovytsia).[5] Sheptytsky received his education first at home and then in Lviv and later in Kraków.[5] His confessor was Jesuit Henry Nostitz-Jackowski[pl], who was carrying out the reform of the Greek CatholicBasilian Order in Galicia. Probably under his influence, Sheptyskiy made the decision to join the Basilians, which, however, provoked opposition from his father.[5] Hence in 1883 he went to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army but after a few months he fell sick and was forced to abandon it.[5]
Instead, he went to study law in Breslau. There he was a member of the Literary and Slavic Society run by Władysław Nehring[pl], as well as the Upper Silesian Society and the Polish Academicians' Reading Room.[5] With his brother Alexander, he founded the Polish-Catholic Student Theological Society "Societas Hosiana" in 1884.[5] From the 1885/6 academic year, he continued his studies at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, at which time he changed his nationality declaration from "Polish" to "Ruthenian".[5] In April and May 1886 he visited Rome. From November to December 1887 he stayed in Kyiv and then in Moscow.[5] Together with mother and brother Leone he was granted an audience on March 24, 1888, with Pope Leo XIII at the Vatican. Pope blessed his intention to join Basilians.[5] On May 19, 1888 he received doctorate.[5]
According to his biographer Fr. Cyril Korolevsky, Sheptytsky's lifelong dream of creating the Russian Greek Catholic Church as a means of reuniting the Russian people with the Holy See goes back at least to his first trip to Russia in 1887. Afterwards, Sheptytsky "wrote some reflections" between October and November 1887, and expressed his belief, "that the Great Schism, which became definitive in Russia in the fifteenth century, was a bad tree, and it was useless to keep cutting the branches without uprooting the trunk itself, because the branches would always grow back."[6]
Memorial plaque in Kraków, marking the place where Szeptycki lived
In 1899, following the death of CardinalSylwester Sembratowicz, Sheptytsky was nominated by EmperorFranz Joseph to fill the vacant position of Greek Catholic Bishop of Stanyslaviv[7] (now Ivano-Frankivsk), and Pope Leo XIII concurred. Thus he was consecrated as bishop in Lviv on 17 September 1899 by Metropolitan Julian Sas-Kuilovsky assisted by Bishop Chekhovych and Bishop Weber, the Latin-Rite auxiliary of Lviv.[8] On February 5 of that year, he received a doctorate in theological sciences in Rome, nostrified at the Faculty of Theology of the Jagiellonian University.[5] A year later, following the death of Julian Sas-Kuilovsky, Sheptytsky was appointed, at the age of thirty-six, Metropolitan of Halych, Archbishop of Lviv and Bishop of Kamenets-Podolsk; he was enthroned on 17 January 1901.[9][5] From February 1901, he sat with the House of Lords of the Imperial Council in Vienna with the title of secret counselor. He also became deputy speaker of the Galician Diet, a position he held until 1912.[5]
He was active in promoting the revival and expansion of the Eastern Catholic Churches in the territory of Russian Empire, visiting incognito that country several times and secretly ordaining bishops and priests there. He also took an active part in the Velehrad congresses. He also strove for the revival of the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church, and to this end contacted important leaders of the movement for Belarusian nationalism, including Ivan Lutskevich.[5]
Sheptytsky supported the Ukrainian national movement, founding a Greek Catholic seminary in Stanislaviv, supported the opening of a Ukrainian gymnasium there, and a Ukrainian university and hospital in Lviv.[5] He sponsored an exhibition of Ukrainian artists in Lviv in 1905, led a Ukrainian pilgrimage to Palestine, and led a Ukrainian delegation to Emperor Franz Joseph seeking reform of the electoral law.[5] At the same time, he sought to prevent Polish-Ukrainian nationalist conflicts in Galicia. In 1904, he issued a pastoral letter to Polish Greek Catholics, urging them to love their own nation and warning against harming others under the guise of patriotism.[5] In 1908, he harshly condemned the assassination of Galician governor Andrzej Kazimierz Potocki by Ukrainian student Myroslav Sichinskyi[uk].[5]
After the outbreak of World War I, Sheptytsky proposed eventual creation of the Ukrainian state out of the Russian territories, he also appealed believers to stay loyal to the emperor of Austria.[5] When Russians entered Lviv Sheptytsky was arrested on September 18, 1914 and sent to Kyiv. While being there he tried to recreate union by consecrating Yosif Botsyan as bishop of Lutsk.[5] For this activity, he was deported to Nizhny Novgorod, then Kursk, after that to monastery of Saint Euthymius in Suzdal and finally to Yaroslav.[11][5] He was released in 1918 and returned to Lviv from the Russian Empire. Bolsheviks destroyed his parents' rural house in Prylbychi where he was born.[11] During the destruction the family archives were lost.[11] Sheptytsky again visited the United States in 1920.[12]
World War II
After the German invasion of Poland, Sheptytsky issued a pastoral letter appealing not to succumb to propaganda. On October 9, 1939, after the Soviets occupied eastern Poland, without the consent of the Holy See, he created a new territorial division of the Greek Catholic Church on the territory of the USSR.[5] During the Soviet occupation, he tried to protect the independence of the Church from control by the Soviet authorities. He protested the atheization of youth, organized synods and secretly ordained bishops. He also contacted the Polish underground (ZWZ) to ease Polish-Ukrainian relations.[5]
Sheptytsky welcomed the Wehrmacht entering Lviv and supported the OUN-B's declaration of Ukrainian independence on June 30, 1941. After the dissolution of Yaroslav Stetsko's government, he became honorary chairman of the Ukrainian Council of Seniors. On July 22, 1941, in a letter to Joachim von Ribbentrop, Germany's foreign minister, he protested against the annexation of Eastern Galicia to the General Government.[5] In August 1941, he assumed the protectorate of the newly established Ukrainian Red Cross. Gradually, he developed a dislike for the Nazi Party, being disgusted by their policies toward the civilian population. In June 1942, he promulgated the document The Ideal of Our National Life, in which he presented a vision of an independent, united Ukraine united by a single Church in union with the Holy See.[5] In February 1942, he signed a letter to Adolf Hitler issued by the OUN-M opposing German policies and demanding the establishment of an independent Ukraine. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1943, Sheptytsky appointed chaplains for the forming Ukrainian SS-Galizien division.[5]
This was because Sheptytsky initially supported the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), even blessing new recruits.[13] According to his close friend RabbiDavid Kahane, however, Sheptytsky had believed that the Division would be used to fight Stalinism and personally expressed disgust in a conversation with the Rabbi about the Division's subsequent role as perpetrators of the Holocaust in Ukraine.
Also in February 1942, Sheptytsky sent a letter to Heinrich Himmler protesting the Holocaust in Ukraine.[5] During World War II, he saved at least 150-200 Jews, mainly children, by hiding them in Greek Catholic orphanages, monasteries, and convents, where they were trained in how to pass as Greek Catholics. He collaborated in this work with the superiors of the Studite orders, Sister Josefa (Helena Witter) and his brother Klymentiy Sheptytsky.[14][5] At his archbishop's residence in Lviv, he gave shelter to Kurt Lewin, the son of Jecheskiel Lewin, the chief rabbi of the Lviv progressive synagogue.[5]
In August 1942, Sheptytsky sent a letter to Pius XII in which he reported on the brutal Nazi policies and unequivocally condemned the murder of Jews, and also admitted that his original assessment of the Germans' attitude toward Ukrainians was wrong.[5] He also issued on November 21, 1942, the pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill",[15] to protest Nazi atrocities.
According to historian Ronald Rychlak, "A German Foreign Office agent named 'Frederic' was sent in a tour through various Nazi-occupied and satellite countries during the war. He wrote in his confidential report to the German Foreign Office on September 19, 1943, that Metropolitan Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky, of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, remained adamant in saying that the killing of Jews was an inadmissible act. 'Frederic' went on to comment that Sheptytsky made the same statements and used the same phrasing as the French, Belgian, and Dutch bishops, as if they were all receiving instructions from the Vatican."[16]
One of the rabbis whose life was saved by Metropolitan Sheptytsky, David Kahane, stated: "Andrew Sheptytsky deserves the undying gratitude of the Jews and the honorific title 'Prince of the Righteous'".[17] In addition, among the Jews who, thanks to Sheptytsky's help, survived the war were Lili Pohlmann and her mother, Adam Daniel Rotfeld (later Poland's foreign minister), two sons of the chief rabbi of Katowice (including the prominent cardiac surgeon Leon Chameides).[18]
Sheptytsky maintained contacts with the Polish underground and tried to mediate in the Polish-Ukrainian conflict. In the autumn of 1941, he met with Jerzy Braun, an envoy of Government Delegate for PolandCyryl Ratajski and General Stefan Rowecki, Commander-in-Chief of the ZWZ, to whom he made a proposal to delegate two Ukrainian representatives to the National Council in London.[5] Sheptytsky was aware of the ongoing genocide of the Polish population organized by the forces of OUN-B and the UPA since the summer of 1943. He did not condemn it outright, but in a pastoral letter of August 10, 1943, he called for saving the lives of those in danger, and in another of August 31, he urged both sides to stop fighting. In early 1944, he condemned the killings and their perpetrators, regardless of their motives. In a "word for Easter" dated April 16, 1944, he called for harmony between neighbors.[5]
During this period he secretly consecrated Josyf Slipyj as his successor. Sheptytsky died in 1944 and is buried in St. George's Cathedral in Lviv. In 1958 the cause for his canonization was begun, but stalled at the behest of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. Pope Francis approved his life as being one of heroic virtue on 16 July 2015, thus proclaiming him to be Venerable.
Views
Sheptytsky in the early years of his episcopacy expressed strong support for a celibate Eastern Catholic clergy. Yet he said to have changed his mind after years in Imperial Russian prisons where he encountered the faithfulness of married Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox priests and their wives and families. After this, he fought Latin Catholic leaders who attempted to require clerical celibacy among Eastern Catholic priests.[19]
Sheptytsky was also a patron of artists, students, including many Orthodox Christians, and a pioneer of ecumenism—he also opposed the Second Polish Republic policies of linguistic imperialism, coercive Polonisation, and the forced conversion of Greek Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainians into Latin Rite Catholics.[20] He strove for reconciliation between ethnic groups and wrote frequently on social issues and spirituality. He also founded the Studite and Ukrainian Redemptorist orders, a hospital, the National Museum, and the Theological Academy. He actively supported various Ukrainian organizations such as the Prosvita and in particular, the Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization, and donated a campsite in the Carpathian Mountains called Sokil and became the patron saint of the Plast fraternity Orden Khrestonostsiv.
Commemoration
Jews who were saved thanks to actions of Andrey Sheptytsky have lobbied Yad Vashem for years to have him named Righteous Among the Nations, just as his brother Klymentiy Sheptytsky had been, but so far Yad Vashem has not done so, mostly due to concerns with his initial belief that German invaders would be better for Ukraine than the Soviet Union had been.[21]
The first monument to Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky was erected during his lifetime in 1932. It was destroyed by the Soviets in 1939. A new monument to Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky was inaugurated in Lviv on 29 July 2015, the 150th anniversary of his birth.[22]
On 19 September 2024, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine voted to rename the city of Chervonohrad to Sheptytskyi in his honor.[23]
Images
Father Andrey in Rome, 1921
Archbishop Andreas Szeptycki in Philadelphia, October 1910.
↑ Cyril Korolevsky (1993), Metropolitan Andrew (1865-1944), translated and revised by Serge Keleher. Eastern Christian Publications, Fairfax, Virginia. Page 249.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) is a major archiepiscopal sui iuris ("autonomous") Eastern Catholic church that is based in Ukraine. As a particular church of the Catholic Church, it is in full communion with the Holy See. It is the third-largest particular church in the Catholic Church after the Latin Church and the Syro-Malabar Church. The major archbishop presides over the entire Church but is not distinguished with the patriarchal title. The incumbent Major Archbishop is Sviatoslav Shevchuk.
Aleksander Fredro was a Polish poet, playwright and author active during Polish Romanticism in the period of partitions by neighboring empires. His works including plays written in the octosyllabic verse (Zemsta) and in prose as well as fables, belong to the canon of Polish literature. Fredro was harshly criticized by some of his contemporaries for light-hearted humor or even alleged immorality which led to years of his literary silence. Many of Fredro's dozens of plays were published and popularized only after his death. His best-known works have been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian and Slovak.
Sheptytskyi, formerly Chervonohrad, historically Krystynopol, is a mining city and the administrative center of Sheptytskyi Raion, Lviv Oblast of western Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Sheptytskyi urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Sheptytskyi lies about 62 km north of Lviv, 7 km from Sokal, 28 km northeast of the town of Voroniv, and has a population of 64,297.
The Russian Greek Catholic Church or Russian Byzantine Catholic Church is a sui iuris Byzantine Rite Eastern Catholic Church of the worldwide Catholic Church. Historically, it represents a both a movement away from the control of the Church by the State and towards the reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Catholic Church. It is in full communion with and subject to the authority of the Pope of Rome as defined by Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.
Rudky is a city in Sambir Raion, Lviv Oblast in Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Rudky urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. The population was 4,942 at the 2001 Ukrainian census. Current population: 5,230.
Stanisław Maria Jan Teofil Szeptycki was a Polish count, general and military commander.
The Order of Saint Basil the Great, also known as the Basilian Order of Saint Josaphat, is a Greek Catholic monastic order of pontifical right that works actively among Ukrainian Catholics and other Greek-Catholic churches in central and Eastern Europe. The order received approbation on August 20, 1631, and is based at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, Vilnius.
The Ukrainian Studites are a monastic order of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Klymentiy Sheptytsky, was an archimandrite of the Order of Studite monks of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and was a hieromartyr. Klymentiy has been beatified by the Catholic Church, as well as awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel for saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust in Ukraine. As effective leader of his Church, he was arrested and died a political prisoner of the Soviet Union in the Gulag.
Pidkamin is a rural settlement in Zolochiv Raion, Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine. It is located near the administrative border of three oblasts, Lviv, Rivne, and Ternopil. Pidkamin hosts the administration of Pidkamin settlement hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population: 1,895.
On the basis of a secret clause of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, capturing the eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic. Lwów, the capital of the Lwów Voivodeship and the principal city and cultural center of the region of Galicia, was captured and occupied by September 22, 1939 along with other provincial capitals including Tarnopol, Brześć, Stanisławów, Łuck, and Wilno to the north. The eastern provinces of interwar Poland were inhabited by an ethnically mixed population, with ethnic Poles as well as Polish Jews dominant in the cities, and ethnic Ukrainians dominating the countryside and overall. These lands now form the backbone of modern Western Ukraine and West Belarus.
The relations between Pope Pius X and Russia were difficult, and the situation of Polish Catholics in Russia did not improve.
Kamenica is a village in the municipality of Čelinac, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Stephen Soter Ortynsky Hentosh, O.S.B.M. was an Austrian Catholic prelate who served as the first bishop of all Greek Catholics in the United States. He was a member of the Order of Saint Basil the Great.
Bishop Nykanor Deyneha was the clandestine Ukrainian Auxiliary bishop of Lviv of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Also he was leader of the Studite Brethren as the clandestine Archimandrite of the Univ Lavra during the time of the religion persecution in the Soviet Union. In addition, bishop Nykanor was a Nazi prisoner from 1942 to 1943.
Prylbychi is a village (selo) in Yavoriv Raion, Lviv Oblast, in southwest Ukraine. It belongs to Novoiavorivsk urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. The village is at a distance of 47 kilometres (29 mi) from the city of Lviv and 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) from the city of Yavoriv. Its population is 1,529. Local government — Prylbychivska village council.
Szeptycki was a major noble family in Ruthenia. The family was related to a number of other noble families, such as the Wiśniowiecki, the Ledóchowski or the Fredro.
Zofia Ludwika Cecylia Konstancja Szeptycka de domo Fredro, was a Polish poet and painter. The mother of Andrey Sheptytsky, O.S.B.M., the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (1900–1944), and of the Blessed Hieromartyr Klymentiy Sheptytsky, MSU, an archimandrite of the Order of Studite monks of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Szeptycki is a Polish-language surname. It belongs to the Polish noble Szeptycki family. The Ukrainian-language spelling of the surname is Sheptytskyi. The name is also sometimes rendered as Sheptytsky or Sheptycki. Notable people with the surname include:
Stanisław Kostka Starowieyski (1895-1941) was a reserve artillery captain of the Polish Armed Forces who took part in the Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Soviet Wars from 1918 to 1920. He was a church, social, and charitable activist, as well as and a papal chamberlain. He died in Dachau concentration camp, and was beatified in 1999.
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