750,000 participate in pilgrimage to Zarvanytsia shrine (07/30/00)

750,000 participate in pilgrimage to Zarvanytsia shrine

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

ZARVANYTSIA, Ukraine - They came by car, by bus and on foot. Some traveled for a week, others for a few hours. They arrived from Donetsk in the east of Ukraine and from New York in the east of the United States, but mostly from the regions of western Ukraine. Adults, children, pensioners, the indigent and the disabled, and unexpectedly large numbers of teenagers and young adults congregated from many of the corners of the world in the small village of Zarvanytsia, located on the banks of the meandering Strypa River in the Terebovlia region of the Ternopil Oblast of western Ukraine.

By Friday afternoon, July 21, the roads to Zarvanytsia were clogged with a train of humanity slowly making its way to one of the holiest shrines of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.

An elderly woman walked the road to the shrine from the city of Ivano Frankivsk. It took four days. A young man from the city of Stryi, located not far from the Polish border, said he decided to join a group of pilgrims walking to Zarvanytsia on the spur of the moment. A middle-aged man made the trek from a neighboring village. It took him and his family "merely" seven hours, as he explained.

What drew them was the July 22-23 All-Ukrainian Pilgrimage of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church to the Zarvanytsia shrine, and before it was over nearly 750,000 people had taken part, making it one of the largest gatherings of Ukrainians ever. Although authorities could not give exact figures, they estimated that at least 200,000 people had entered the grounds of the Marian shrine on each of the two days of the weekend event, with over 250,000 more gathered for an evening candlelight vigil on Saturday evening.

Organized as a second millennium celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ by the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, the objective reason for the mass gathering was the blessing of the new Sobor of the Our Lady of Zarvanytsia. However, it was more than that. Church leaders said that, in addition to giving thanks for the re-emergence of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church after nearly a half century of persecution, they hoped the pilgrimage would become an act of forgiveness and purification, an opportunity for the Church and the faithful to ask forgiveness for their own affronts and those committed by the various Ukrainian religious confessions against one another over the last century. It was also a chance to pray for the reunification of the long-divided Ukrainian Church.

Children hold an icon of Our Lady of Zarvanytsia
during the blessing of a new church at the Zarvanytsia shrine.

Roman Woronowycz

It became still more: an act of mass bonding for the faithful of the long-suffering Church, as people made new acquaintances and renewed old ones.

"I came to pray for my family, for our health and well-being, but also for nenka Ukraina (Mother Ukraine), so that she finally achieves her potential," said Vasyl Hladchuk, who had traveled from the nearby village of Monastyrsk.

Some of the pilgrims slept in hotels in Ternopil, while others found rooms in neighboring villages. But most spent the night together on the grounds of the shrine: in tents or under the stars, or in the vehicles that carried them there. Many did not sleep at all, but spent the starlit hours praying and attending services through the morning.

Meals for a large portion of the pilgrims consisted of bits of fatback or sausage and coarse black bread, along with fruits and vegetables, which they had brought with themselves and ate together as they sat on rocks, tree stumps or the bare ground. Others built campfires and ate more fully, while a large number didn't eat at all, preferring to fast and sustain themselves on the water that flows from the Zarvanytsia spring that is said to have healing powers.

Men, women and children, dressed in everything from low cut t-shirts emblazoned with the Calvin Klein logo and shorts to folk costumes embroidered in the style of the geographic region from which they hailed, took part in a dizzying array of choral contests, concerts, prayer services and divine liturgies dedicated to the Our Lady of Zarvanytsia, who is credited for numerous miracles at this site through the healing waters of a spring that bubbles to the earth's surface only meters from the Strypa River. There was also a youth meeting, an art exhibit and a conference on martyrs of the 20th century.

Across the river from the sobor, a tent city rose on the first day of the retreat, home to several thousand mostly college-aged adults and a smattering of older folks, representatives of parishes and church organizations, as well as three Ukrainian youth groups: the Ukrainian scouting organization, Plast; the Tryzub Society Youth Organization of Stepan Bandera; and the Youth: Hope of Ukraine group. They camped out, swam and attended various events during the day, and sang and played Ukrainian religious and folk songs at night.

Visitors jammed the main street of the tiny village of less than a thousand inhabitants to buy ice cream, soda and an assortment of icons, rosary beads, prayer books and crosses. They also queued at faucets through which the spring water now flows to fill water bottles and jugs to take home.

Throughout the weekend there were many compelling sights: men and women praying the rosary under trees or beneath the shrine built over the wellspring; elderly women lying prostrate, their heads bowed to the ground for the entire two-hour duration of the Sunday divine liturgy; a man in a makeshift wheelchair washing his legs with spring water at one of the many faucets near the foot of the sobor.

Three events highlighted this remarkable weekend and gathering.

First was the rain-soaked blessing of the sobor and its main altar on Saturday afternoon. At about 4 p.m., as dark clouds gathered overhead, the bishops and clergy of the Church circled and then entered the still unfinished sobor, whose exterior cupolas are not yet all gilded and whose interior still lacks icons, frescoes and an iconostas.

While the blessing of the structure and an archiepiscopal divine liturgy took place in the upper church, other bishops blessed the main altar in the lower church and implanted a relic of St. Josaphat Kuntsevych beneath the altar's surface.

The church blessing did not go off without several hitches. First, Bishop Lubomyr Husar, the administrative head of the Church, who carries out official duties for the leader of the Church, the aged and ill Cardinal Ivan Lubachivsky, was delayed and did not show up for the liturgy.

Second, when the rains arrived, the hierarchy decided to change the venue of the divine liturgy from its original site on a stage before the church, which sits atop a hill overlooking a large valley, and to do it all inside. The only problem was that no one told the faithful, more than 50,000 of whom stood in the rain waiting patiently for the appearance of of the Church hierarchy and the beginning of the divine liturgy. Also, no one thought to provide external speakers so that the throngs outside could hear the services taking place within the church. As word spread among the crowd that the divine liturgy was well under way inside, the disappointed masses dispersed.

Much more successful - in fact, an awe-inspiring visual spectacle - was the evening candlelight vigil, which began after the sun had set that evening. As large throngs again began to gather in the open field beneath the sobor, on the streets of the village and in the surrounding hills, a procession from the village church, led by Bishop Iulian Voronovsky, proceeded to the shrine for a moleben prayer service.

As electrical lighting was extinguished, the ensuing darkness gradually was illuminated by an increasingly larger number of tiny points of light, which eventually engulfed the whole area as if millions of fireflies had descended upon the crowd.

Following the prayer service, a bas relief icon of Our Lady of Zarvanytsia was blessed and mounted in the shrine.

As candles continued to burn, which they did for a good portion of the night, tens of thousands of believers made their way to the stations of the cross located in the woods behind the sobor, where they waited patiently for hours before following the clergy through the 12 sites of the service, which commemorates the suffering of Christ during his crucifixion.

Well after midnight, those who still were not sleeping listened to a concert featuring Nina Matvienko, considered Ukraine's queen of traditional folk music.

The final day culminated with another archiepiscopal divine liturgy held on the stage erected before the sobor. Present were most of the bishops of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church; Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate's representative, Bishop Vasylyi of Kolomyia; and two representatives from the Vatican - Apostolic Nuncio to Ukraine Archbishop Mykola Eterovic and special papal emissary, Archbishop Vinko Pulic of Sarajevo.

Bishop Husar, who led the church service, explained that he was pleased Pope John Paul II had chosen Archbishop Pulic as his emissary, because he represents a Slavic Church - one that also had suffered from Communist persecution, much as the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church had.

While Archbishop Eterovic read a greeting from the pope, Archbishop Pulic gave the sermon during the service. Both Vatican representatives emphasized in their remarks that the acrimony and even hatred that may still linger from the events of the past must be cleansed from the hearts of the faithful. Archbishop Pulic underscored that the major tragedy of the Ukrainian nation has been its religious divisiveness.

Following completion of the church service, Ukraine's vice prime minister for humanitarian affairs, Mykola Zhulynskyi, who along with Minister of Emergency Situations Vasyl Durdynets led the official Ukrainian delegation representing the government and President Leonid Kuchma, extended greetings to the Church and those gathered. President Kuchma was vacationing in Yalta that week.

The celebrations, the prayer services and the divine liturgies that occurred in Zarvanytsia were a celebration of the Mother of God, who many believe has performed miracles through the waters that flow from a spring there. According to legend, in the 13th century the Mother of God appeared to a monk who was fleeing the Mongol invasion that had destroyed Kyiv. On the banks of the Strypa River, he prayed to her for protection. In his sleep the monk had a vision of the Mother of God, with two angels hovering beside her. She smiled and touched the monk with her cloak. As he awoke, he saw a brilliant light beaming near the river. Approaching it he came upon an icon of the Mother of God with Jesus in her arms.

The monk decided to stay in the area and build a chapel to house the icon. Eventually he constructed a church and an adjoining monastery. Over the centuries many cases of miraculous healing have been recorded by the monks who have resided there for centuries. Prince Vasylko of Terebovlia was reportedly cured of a serious affliction in the 16th century.

During the Soviet era, Communist Party officials repeatedly tried to cap the wellspring to no avail, according to local lore. When they covered one fount, water would burst forth from another.

Pilgrims, who continued to visit the shrine even after it was officially shut down, often would be met by local militia with dogs or barbed wire to dissuade believers from entering. Although the faithful could not avoid the dogs, more often than not barbed wire erected one day would be pitched into the Strypa by the next.

For photos of the pilgrimage to Zarvanytsia, see the centerfold.

PHOTO REPORT: 750,000 participate in pilgrimage to Zarvanytsia shrine

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