Turning the pages back... July 15, 1877 (07/12/98)

Turning the pages back...

July 15, 1877

Petro Poniatyshyn was born on July 15, 1877, in Semeniv, Terebovlia county, Halychyna. Ordained as a Ukrainian Catholic priest in 1902, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1903 and became actively involved Ukrainian community life, including the Ukrainian National Association.

He arrived at a heady time. Bishop Soter Ortynsky, who was appointed the first bishop of Ukrainian Catholics in the country in 1907, tried to bring all aspects of the community's life under his authority, which resulted in divisiveness within the Church and the community at large. At the 1908 convention of the UNA held in Philadelphia, the bishop was elected an honorary member and patron of the organization, which led to a split in the UNA as non-Catholics objected to this special status for a Catholic hierarch. At that same convention, the Rev. Poniatyshyn was elected director of the Svoboda Press. The Rev. Poniatyshyn later wrote that "a Ukrainian Catholic bishop, as a natural consequence of his office, cannot serve as 'patron' of an organization which accepted non-Catholics."

Upon Bishop Ortynsky's death in 1916, the Vatican appointed two vicars general for Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S.: the Rev. Poniatyshyn, who also served as administrator of the Philadelphia see, for Galician Ukrainians, and the Pittsburgh-based Rev. Hryhoriy Martiak for Transcarpathian Ukrainians. The Rev. Poniatyshyn served in this capacity until the appointment of Bishop Constantine Bohachevsky as apostolic exarch in 1924.

The UNA had been part of the Federation of Ukrainians in the U.S. since the federation's founding in 1915, in part in opposition to Bishop Ortynsky's American Ruthenian National Council. In 1918, because of the increasingly anti-clerical and socialist bent in the federation, the UNA split off to form the Ukrainian National Committee (UNC) and elected the Rev. Poniatyshyn as its president.

The Rev. Poniatyshyn headed a delegation that traveled to Washington in 1919 in a vain attempt to convince the U.S. government to recognize the Ukrainian National Republic in Kyiv. Under his leadership, the UNC in October 1922 convened a congress to form a broad successor organization, the United Ukrainian Organizations in America.

The Rev. Poniatyshyn, died in Skokie, Ill., on February 4, 1960.

Sources: "Federation of Ukrainians in the U.S.," "Petro Poniatyshyn," "Ukrainian Catholic Church," "Ukrainian National Committee," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vols. 1, 3, 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984, 1993); "Ukrainian American Citadel: The First One Hundred Years of the Ukrainian National Association," by Dr. Myron B. Kuropas (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1996).