Venerable Andrey Sheptytsky

This information is taken from an article written by Dr Andrew Thomas Kania about Metropolitan Andrii Sheptyts’kyi, the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church 1900-1944. Sheptyts’kyi’s story has been little known in the Western world until the last twenty years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Dr Kania suggests he stands as a tall leader following the   dictates of conscience to be “his brothers’ keeper” in the protection of Jewish people from State persecution. Dr. Kania’s asked whether the model of spiritual leadership that Andrew presented is a model that has the power to attract people back to the Good News, given the particular challenges faced in the West as it might have had in the particular circumstances faced by the Ukrainian people in the 20th Century?

Recent years have seen an enormous degree of criticism leveled at the apparent apathy of the Catholic Church, and in particular Pope Pius XII, toward the Jewish communities of Europe who suffered enormous horrors in what historians call “The Holocaust”.

In numeric terms “The Holocaust” is only surpassed in the 20th century by Stalin’s plan of extermination for the Eastern Ukrainian people known as the “Terror Famine 1933”.

“The Holocaust” set the stage not only for tragedy and depravity, but also for great acts of heroism, such as was shown by Raoul Wallenberg, and Oskar Schindler. Until Ukraine won its independence at the beginning of the 1990’s, it was impossible to fully create a portrait of another individual of great courage who risked his own life, to not only counter the evil of fascism but also that of communism. This man was Metropolitan Andrii

Roman Aleksander Sheptyts’kyi was born on 29 July, 1865 of an aristocratic family in Prylbychi, Galicia (in present day Ukraine). Entering this world a number of months after the death of Abraham Lincoln, Sheptyts’kyi became Head of His Church at the turn of a new century, when the automobile was beginning its replacement of the horse and cart. He died with the sounds of German and Soviet tanks trampling his homeland, when the world would soon hear the thunder of the Atomic bomb.

Although baptized a Catholic of the Roman Rite on determination of his father Jan, Roman’s family could claim among their familial predecessors no less than two Eparchs and two Metropolitans.

During the coming weeks I shall share more about Metropolitan Andrii. He is a great figure in our church’s history.