THE PAPAL VISIT TO UKRAINE / News

Dear Editor,
I would like to express my appreciation to Alessandra Stanley for her coverage of the extraordinary visit of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to Ukraine. For myself, as spokesman of His Beatitude Lubomyr Cardinal Husar, it was an honor to work with the unbelievable number of dedicated professionals who came to cover the event. Unfortunately, I must take issue with her piece, "Pope, Ending Visit to Ukraine, Reaches Out to Orthodox" (June 28, 2001), inasmuch as it contains precisely the kind of "stereotyped ways of thinking" to which the Holy Father made reference in his homily.

04.07.2001 (09:09) // Religious Information Service of Ukraine

   The statements of His Beatitude on Wednesday were intended to be a call to mutual forgiveness for various hurts from the distant and more recent past, at the forefront of which are the accusations of the Moscow Patriarchate regarding the transfer of Church properties in the early 1990's. Ms. Stanley correctly identifies the Nazi occupation as one of the periods in the XX century, during which certain sons and daughters of our Church wronged their neighbors, both their own people as well as others. But there is a difference between acknowledging that some individuals were unworthy of their Christian calling and implying that the entire Church was guilty of "collaboration". Ms. Stanley seems to regard as fact the trumped-up charges and propaganda used by the Soviets in order to suppress our church in 1945-46.

  In reality, already in the first weeks of the 1941-44 German occupation, the spiritual leader of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky began writing a series of condemning letters to the West, including a courageous letter to Himmler protesting the murder of innocents in Western Ukraine. In a pastoral letter titled "Thou shalt not kill", he also threatened with excommunication any faithful tempted to participate in the atrocities. His brother, Klymentij, who was among those beatified in the ceremony on Wednesday, instructed his Studite monasteries to hide as many Jewish males as possible, and for this he has already been recognized as a "righteous Gentile".

  Other comments in the article reflect an ignorance of this region's history that is absolutely astounding for someone who is expected to do her research. The Ukrainian Army unit "Galicia" was created in 1943 for the sole purpose of fighting the Red Army, and was placed under the military command of the "SS" because it wasn't considered trustworthy by the Nazis. It's members naively believed that they would become the core of an independent Ukrainian Army once the war was over. The division only fought one battle against the Soviets, near Brody, and lost. Many of the young and inexperienced soldiers died on the battlefield, some were captured and sent to the Gulag, while others fled and later ended up in POW camps in Italy.

  The suggestion that Ukrainian nationalists or Greek Catholics from Western Ukraine were somehow involved in the massacres at Kyiv's Babi Yar is so incredible that even the Soviets never attempted to fabricate such a story. Apologizing for the past does not include accepting responsibility for historical fiction.

  While Ms. Stanley may be a gifted journalist in describing current events, with all due respect, I suggest she leave history in the hands of qualified specialists.

  Rev. Andrew T. Onuferko
Lviv, Ukraine





  The New York Times

  June 28, 2001

  Pope, Ending Visit to Ukraine, Reaches Out to Orthodox

  By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

  LVIV, Ukraine, June 27 - Paying tribute to a branch of his faith that was fiercely persecuted in Soviet times, Pope John Paul II put 28 Greek Catholics on the road to sainthood today at an outdoor Mass attended by a million people.

  The Mass marked the emotional high point of a five-day visit to Ukraine in which the Pope sought to blend his actions with his longtime dream of ending a centuries-old schism with the Orthodox Church.

  Winding up his journey close to the borders of his native Poland, the pope seemed acutely conscious of the painful history of the region, and its many religious and ethnic divides. All but one of those beatified, he noted, were Ukrainian martyrs who died in a land covered with "mountains of corpses and rivers of blood," and he asked that all believers move beyond past grievances.

  "Together with them, Christians of other confessions were also persecuted and killed on account of Christ," the pope said in Ukrainian. "Their joint martyrdom is a pressing call for reconciliation and unity." In addition to the 27 Ukrainians, the pope also elevated a Russian Greek Catholic priest.

  Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, leader of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which follows Byzantine rites but is loyal to Rome, took an additional step, asking forgiveness for those Greek Catholics who in the last century "consciously and voluntarily did evil things, both to their own people and to others." His sweeping apology included one of the most painful episodes of Ukrainian history: collaboration with the Nazis.

  "It may seem strange, incomprehensible and even contradictory in this moment of the glorification of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to recall also that the history of the past century knew moments of darkness and spiritual tragedy," Cardinal Husar said. He explained that a "spirit of mutual forgiveness" would help alleviate the weight of the "horrible past."

  When the Communist government formally abolished the Greek Catholic Church in 1946, it executed many priests and forced the rest into prison or exile, or into the authorized Orthodox Church, or essentially drove them underground. The church's collaboration with the Nazis was one reason cited for the ban.

  Many Ukrainian Catholics did side with Germany, hoping to oust the Communist regime. Some joined the infamous Galicia Division of the Nazi SS, and some Ukrainian nationalists took part in the mass murder of Jews in Poland and Ukraine, including at Babi Yar, where the pope visited a memorial on Monday.

  The pope, who issued a broad apology last year for the sins of Catholics throughout history, has made what he calls "the purification of memory" the key to religious reconciliation with Jews and with Christian denominations.

  For example, he apologized to the Greek Orthodox Church while in Athens last month for the sacking of Constantinople in 1204. His calls in Ukraine for mutual forgiveness, like the cardinal's apology, were broadcast worldwide, but were also aimed at overcoming Orthodox mistrust. The Russian Church views Greek Catholicism as a Trojan horse to convert Orthodox believers.

  To this the pope responded: "During the last centuries, too many stereotyped ways of thinking, too much mutual resentment and too much intolerance have accumulated. The only way to clear the path is to forget the past, ask forgiveness from one another and forgive one another for the wounds inflicted and received."

  The Mass today, which Cardinal Husar celebrated in the Eastern rite as the pope presided from an armchair on a podium covered in icons, was the climax of a five-day papal visit that had at times conflicting goals.

  The pope wanted to ease tensions with the hostile Orthodox Church and pave the way for a visit to Moscow. But he also wanted to celebrate the rebirth of the Greek Catholic Church, whose very existence is one of the main reasons the Orthodox Patriarch Aleksy II did not want him to come. Aleksy's representative in Kiev, Metropolitan Vladimir, boycotted the visit.

  Whether this trip will bring the pope any closer to visiting Moscow is far from clear. But he already has plans to visit two other former Soviet republics with Orthodox and Catholic communities, Kazakhstan and Armenia, in September. The pope is also said to be considering a trip to Belarus, where Patriarch Aleksy was throughout the pope's visit, warning Orthodox believers that the Vatican was seeking to "divide us."

  The beatifications, which were rushed through Vatican bureaucracy in almost record time, were the pope's way of rewarding Greek Catholics for their fidelity through bitter persecution.

  The Rev. Joachim Senkivskyi, who died in a Soviet prison in 1941, was one of the 27 Greek Catholics who the Vatican says died defending their faith. Local church legend has it that Father Senkivskyi was boiled to death. There were two victims of the Nazis among the martyrs; one was the Rev. Emilian Kovch, who was jailed by the Soviets in 1941, set free by German invaders, then arrested by the Gestapo for trying to help Jews escape. He died in 1944 in a concentration camp in Poland.

  While the pope's visit may have complicated his relationship with the Orthodox Church, for Ukraine's five million Greek Catholics, today's Mass was a special vindication.

  "The pope came here as a gift, to thank us for suffering and keeping faithful to our church," Maria Sultanova, 48, explained as she waited for a glimpse of the pope at the muddy racetrack where the Mass was celebrated. Her parents pretended to be Greek Orthodox but had her secretly baptized in 1953 by an underground Greek Catholic priest.

  President Leonid Kuchma, whose government has been undermined by charges of corruption and human rights violations, attended the Mass, but the pope's popularity did not carry over to him. When his name was announced, some applauded and others whistled derisively.

  The pope also managed to reach out to ordinary Orthodox believers, many of whom turned out to see him or attend one of his Masses, at times defying their priests to do so.

  Olga Klimenko, 23, traveled almost 2,000 miles by bus from Odessa to attend the Mass on Monday outside Kiev. "My father told me that in 1981, the Soviets wanted to invade Poland and the pope protected it," she said. "My priest told me not to come, but I wanted to see him. So did the Rev. Ioan Sviridov, an archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church and a theology professor at Moscow State University. He decided on his own to attend today's Mass, and was seated on the podium to exchange a quick greeting with the pope, said Cardinal Husar's spokesman, Andrij Onuferko.

  The pope did not fulfill one dream harbored by many Greek Catholics: He did not grant Cardinal Husar permission to use the Eastern title patriarch, which would put him on the same footing with Eastern Orthodox counterparts, a step that could further antagonize Moscow.

  The congregation at Mass today did not wait for Vatican permission. When Cardinal Husar, dressed in gold and white vestments and a gold byzantine crown, entered the area, some of his followers chanted "Patriarch" as he walked by.

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