Issue 52, September 2016 UKRAINIAN REDEMPTORISTS OF THE YORKTON PROVINCE FULLY ALIVE A Bishop Velychkovsky Martyr’s Shrine Publication 1941 in Kami- 4th Pilgrimage to Ukraine anetz Podilsk. In Shuparka, the This past July we conducted our 4 th Bishop Vel- church of his ychkovsky Pilgrimage to Ukraine. As with the past childhood, we pilgrimages, we visited celebrated the and prayed at the plac- Acathist hymn in es where Blessed his honour with Vasyl lived, worked the local Orthodox At Bl. Vasyl’s father’s gravesite and suffered. There priest. We made in Yabluniv were thirteen of us who our annual pilgrim- made this spiritual jour- age to the Marian Shrine in ney. Zarvanytsia where we cele- 2016 Bishop Velychkovsky Pilgrimage group in Lviv airport brated the Divine Liturgy with Patriarch Sviatoslav together with all the Ukrainian Bishops Our pilgrimage and some 200,000 faithful. began with the celebra- We visited the Carpathian tion of the Divine Liturgy Mountains, the towns of in Blessed Vasyl’s Drohobych, Novoyavorisk, apartment, where he and an orphanage in Po- lived in his later years telych. We were invited to cel- during the time of the ebrate the baptism of An- - Celebrating the Divine Liturgy An orphan from the catacomb church (1955 drijko’s son, an orphan that 1969). During these in Bl. Vasyl’s apartment in Lviv we have been supporting for orphanage in Potelych years, this apartment was the nerve center of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. years, in the mountain Priests and sisters would come there for guidance in village of Lavochne. their pastoral ministry in those trying times. After This was a truly unfor- Blessed Vasyl was secretly consecrated a bishop in gettable village expe- 1963, one can say that this was his cathedral and his rience. We concluded chancery. The apartment our pilgrimage toured has been restored to its in the capital city of original form with many Kyiv. These are just a artifacts (altar, cup- With Patriarch Sviatoslav at the few of the places we boards, table, bed cover- Sobor of visited. Resurrection in Kyiv ings, altar vessels, icons, and books) that belonged In This Issue: to him. We visited his There were seminary in Lviv and saw three new experi- 4th Pilgrimage - 1 Praying at Bl. Vasyl’s moth- er’s gravesite in Ternopil the jail where he spent ences during this Reaching the Philippines - 3 time before his trial in pilgrimage which - 1969. We toured the city of Ternopil - the place of his need to be highlight- Shrine Visitors 4 arrest in 1945 and the gravesite of his mother Anna ed. The first was in Thanks to Contributors - 4 (Sr. Emilia). We prayed at his father’s gravesite in the city of Kovel in In Memoriam - 6 Yabluniv, in his grandfather’s church in Probiznia, in the Volyn region. Prayer & Info - 6 the church of Blessed Vasyl’s pastoral ministry in Blessed Vasyl served in Volyn from 1928 to 1935 where he had financial support for this new upcoming church much success in forming many new parishes. The oblast (province) of Volynia, which is in the north The second western part of Ukraine new experience was and has its own unique visiting the prison history different from where Blessed Western Ukraine (Lviv, Vasyl was impris- Ternopil & Ivano Frank- oned in August 1945 ivsk). When Poland was in the city of Chor- divided in 1795, Volynia tkiv. Tanya and Oleh fell under Russian rule. Cheharivsky, our The Ukrainian Catholic fellow -workers in Fr. Evhen Zadorozhny being church was then perse- Ukraine, earlier this Newly formed Chapel in Bl. Vasyl’s blessed by Fr. John in Kovel prison cell in Chortkiv cuted and it was ab- year discovered the sorbed by the Russian prison in which Orthodox Church. For a short time between the two Blessed Vasyl was placed after his arrest in Ternopil. World Wars, this area was under Polish rule. It was at This prison, located during and in the few years after this time that the the Second World Ukrainian Catholic War, was in the Church was re - basement of a Car- established under melite monastery. It the direction of was a prison for Blessed Bishop many UPA Nicholas Char- (Ukrainian Partisan netsky, Blessed Army) members and Vasyl and others. also for some priests After 1945, the and religious. The Ukrainian Catholic building was returned Praying the Way of the Cross in Church was again Archbishop Josaphat blessing the to the church in the underground prison cells I suppressed under cornerstone of the new church n Chortkiv dedicated to Bl. Vasyl early 2000’s and be- the communist came the residence for the new bishop, Bishop De- rule. When this ar- metrius Hryhorak of Buchach -Chortkiv. In fact, the ea became part of independent Ukraine in 1991, the bishop’s present chancery office was the former KGB Redemptorists again returned under the enthusiastic office and the KGB sentencing room. We learnt the pastorship of Fr. Evhen Zadorozhny. He founded a history of these basement rooms and of the tortures parish in Kovel under the patronage of Blessed Nich- that occurred there olas Charnetsky. In recent years, he has established from Maria Stepa other smaller parishes outside of Kovel. After much whom we met and work, Fr. Evhen received permission from the city who herself was a government to build a second Ukrainian Catholic prisoner there. After Church in Kovel. This church will be under the patron- the bishop discov- age of Blessed Vasyl Velychkovsky. He coordinated ered that Blessed our pilgrimage so that when we would be present and Vasyl spent some participate in a solemn blessing of the land, the cross time in this prison, and the cornerstone of this new church by Archbish- he began preparing Maria Stepa, who once was a prison- op Josaphat Hovera of Lutz and the local neighbour- er in the same prison as Bl. Vasyl this basement/prison ing clergy. We in Chortkiv for people to come were priviledged and experience it. to be at this new As a pilgrim group, we came into this “holy” and terri- beginning of the ble place where so many were tortured and killed and Ukrainian Greek where Blessed Vasyl spent a few weeks before being Catholic taken to a Kyiv prison. Here we prayed the 7 th Sta- Church’s minis- tion from the Way of the Cross written in Blessed try in Kovel. Vasyl’s honour. In our encounter with Maria Stepa, They marked who herself spent time in this prison and where her Parishioners, pilgrims and clergy present at this occasion by parents and family were killed, we received a this solemn blessing in Kovel permanently firsthand account of Blessed Vasyl’s tortures and mentioning our abuse at the hands of the guards. presence engraved in the cornerstone. They will need 2 Our third new and executed there. discovery on this trip While in Kyiv, we also was the prison in Ky- visited the very mov- iv where Blessed ing Holodomor muse- Vasyl was on death um dedicated to the 7 row. We had several million plus people partial clues where killed by starvation this prison was in during the Stalinist Kyiv, but it was al- regime. We also visit- ways assumed that ed Babyn Yar, where Lukianskaya prison in Kyiv, where he was only in the over 33,000 Jews Bl. Vasyl was on death row prison on 33 Vo- were massacred by Babyn Yar in Kyiv wher Jews were lodymyrska St., where the Nazis on Septem- macsacred presently the Security Police (SBU) have their main ber 29 -30, 1941. Both headquarters. We know that in that building many of these sacred places made us more aware of the hor- the priests and bishops were kept. However, as we rific things human beings can do to others and of our studied the KGB documents, we discovered another responsibility to give each person their due dignity. address and name Holodomor museum in Kyiv of of a prison, the Lukianskaya Street hounoring the “Heavenly Hundred” who lost their Prison. It is hidden from the lives in the Euro Maidan in February 2014 main streets in central Kyiv. In fact, we had a hard time finding it, even though we Blessed Vasyl’s journey of life inspires us to were only a few yards from it. But we did find it. It is follow Christ more whole -heartedly and to be willing still an active prison and we were being filmed for to pay the price in remaining faithful to the Gospel. standing in front of it. We said a prayer for all the pris- oners and for all those who were unjustly condemned Submitted by Fr. John Sianchuk, C.Ss.R. REACHING THE PHILIPPINES On August 27, we were pleased to welcome over 100 members of the Legion of Mary who came to the Shrine for a day of renewal. Most of the members were from the Filipino community. We began with the Divine Litur- gy to which the whole community responded enthusiastically. For many this was their first experience of the Byzantine Liturgy. After the Liturgy, the ro- Legion of Mary group making a pilgrimage sary was recited. Then a 15 mi- to the Shrine nute video presentation on the life of Blessed Vasyl was shown. This was followed by a tour of the museum and shrine and a brief introduction to the spirituality of the Byzantine Church. The morning of prayer and re- newal was very warmly received. For many of them this was their first visit to the Shrine.