Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation assists Church in Ukraine (05/03/98)

Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation assists Church in Ukraine

CHICAGO - The Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation (UCEF) has received $100,000 in donations during its first year. Founded in January of 1997, to assist the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ukraine, the charity also educates Americans about the Church's needs.

Last year's grant recipients in Ukraine included the revived Lviv Theological Academy, the oral history program of the Institute of Church History and a Christian youth radio program. In addition, the UCEF has arranged for several thousand dollars in donations of books and teaching materials.

About one-third of the donations have come from outside the Ukrainian community, including Roman Catholic parishes in Illinois, North Carolina and Arkansas. The foundation's president, Prof. Jeffrey Wills, attributes this success to the efforts of Roman Catholic volunteers in Ukraine who have returned to tell their communities about the challenges facing the Church in the post-Soviet period. The UCEF hopes to increase its outreach to the American public at-large in the coming year and to continue to raise awareness needs.

To inaugurate its lecture series, the Chicago-based foundation also sponsored presentations by Yaroslav Hrytsak, professor of history at Lviv State University, and Olena Dzhedzhora, professor of European history at the Lviv Theological Academy. Both stressed the critical importance of the Catholic Church and humanities education in contemporary Ukraine.

In addition to the gifts received to date, several significant pledges for the foundation's future programs have been made to the foundation's endowment campaign. The parish of Ss. Volodymyr and Olha in Chicago has pledged $250,000 for a chair in theology in memory of their late pastor the Rev. Marian Butrynsky. At a luncheon in Detroit, Bishop Lubomyr Husar applauded Dr. Alexander Gudziak and Yaroslava Gudziak for their commitment of $250,000 for a professorship at the Lviv Theological Academy. In addition, at an event held in Miami Beach to celebrate the 100th birthday of Michael Szypula, a pledge of $100,000 for a commemorative lectureship was committed.

The directors of the foundation are the Rev. Ivan Krotec of Chicago, Prof. Brian Daley of the University of Notre Dame, and Prof. Wills, who is currently teaching in Ukraine as a Fulbright Scholar. Headquartered in the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Chicago, the foundation has been granted 501(c)(3) status as a tax-exempt charitable organization. All donations are tax-deductible. For further information, please contact: Bryon L. Brindel, 2247 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago, IL 60622; telephone, (773) 235-8462; e-mail, [email protected].