Tens of thousands attend funeral services for Cardinal Lubachivsky (12/24/00)

Tens of thousands attend funeral services for Cardinal Lubachivsky

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

LVIV - Tens of thousands of faithful lined the streets of Lviv on December 20 to pay their last respects to Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, archbishop major and head of the 7-million-strong Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC).

The 86-year-old primate died on December 14 at his residence in the St. George's Metropolitan Palace of complications due to pneumonia. Cardinal Lubachivsky had a history of heart problems and seldom had appeared in public in recent years.

The nearly two-kilometer-long procession of bishops, clergy, nuns and monks that accompanied the red casket carrying the last Ukrainian Greek-Catholic patriarch of the 20th century wound through the narrow city streets of this western Ukrainian city for nearly two hours beneath a heavy snowfall, before arriving at St. George Cathedral for the funeral and burial services.

One middle-aged man draped in a brown monk's cloak and carrying a heavy burlap bag and a cross trudged barefoot through the wet snow and cold the entire distance of the procession.

Nearly 200,000 viewed the body during the five days the body lay in state at the cathedral, according to the UGCC press center. Lviv resident Lidia Pavlova, 82, waited for more than three hours on the evening of December 19 in a queue that stretched for hundreds of meters from the cathedral's expansive courtyard onto city streets before growing tired and giving up.

"I really wanted to see him. He would visit friends of mine when he was still a seminarian," explained a deeply disappointed Mrs. Pavlova when she was back in her apartment. Reflecting on the past, she added, "He had a beautiful deep baritone."

Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma also paid his respects, arriving in Lviv from Slovakia in the afternoon of December 19. Mr. Kuchma had a meeting with the UGCC bishops, during which he emphasized that all confessions in Ukraine must have the right to freedom of devotion. Before leaving for Kyiv in the evening, the president also discussed the upcoming visit of Pope John Paul II, which is scheduled for June 2001, and financial assistance from the state to complete reconstruction of the exterior of St. George Cathedral.

The next day, at the conclusion of the funeral ceremony, Bishop Lubomyr Husar thanked President Kuchma for his presence. "When the president bowed his head in respect, it could be said that all of Ukraine was bowing before the late [patriarch]," said the bishop.

Bishop Husar, who was appointed the administrative head of the UGCC in 1998 after it became apparent that Cardinal Lubachivsky could no longer tend to the day-to-day needs of the Church, led the two-hour divine liturgy. Assisting him were many of the UGCC's 35 bishops, who had arrived from eparchies scattered throughout the world. The U.S. delegation consisted of Metropolitan-Archbishop Stephen Sulyk of Philadelphia and Bishop Michael Wiwchar of Chicago.

Other bishops didn't show because they could not get flights to Ukraine due to the heavy holiday season traffic or had decided to wait to travel to Lviv for the Synod of Bishops on January 24, which will elect a new head of the UGCC.

The Roman Catholic Church sent nine representatives, including Cardinal Achilles Silvestrini, the head of the Sacred Congregation of Eastern Churches, who was the official emissary of Pope John Paul II, and Archbishop Mykola Eterovic, apostolic nuncio to Ukraine, as well as several Ukrainian and Polish bishops.

Two of the three Ukrainian Orthodox Churches also were represented. Bishop Andrii of Lviv and Sokal, secretary of its clerical synod, represented the UOC-Kyiv Patriarchate, while the Rev. Mykola Kavchuk, the head of its Patriarchal Court, represented the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

Hundreds of UGCC priests packed the interior of St. George Cathedral during the funeral services, while thousands of faithful listened from speakers placed on the street outside the church, as Archbishop Eterovic read the official condolences from Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Silvestrini extended personal condolences on behalf of the pontiff. Following his remarks, Cardinal Silvestrini gave the pope's official blessing to those gathered.

Once the service was concluded, UGCC bishops escorted the casket holding the remains of Cardinal Lubachivsky out of the church onto the balcony of the entryway, where government and civic leaders eulogized the late Church primate before the assembled public. After circling the cathedral once, the bishops returned inside for the burial. Cardinal Lubachivsky was laid to rest in the crypt below St. George Cathedral alongside his immediate predecessors, Patriarch and Cardinal Josyf Slipyj and Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky.

Among the government officials present for the funeral services were Vice Prime Minister Mykola Zhulynskyi, National Deputy Mykhailo Kosiv of the National Rukh of Ukraine Party, Lviv Oblast Chairman Stepan Senchuk, and a representative of Lviv Mayor Vasyl Kuybida.

Ivan Hel, a long-time Church activist who spent time in Soviet prisons for defending the faith, said while eulogizing Cardinal Lubachivsky that he had laid the foundation for the new UGCC that sprang from the demise of the Soviet Union.

"He developed the Church and strengthened its existence," explained Mr. Hel. "Today we bid him farewell, but he will live with us forever."

The other speakers noted that the primate was the third - after Sheptytsky and Slipyj - in a line of great recent Church leaders and that he was the first UGCC head to have spent much of his life outside Ukraine before returning home.

Among Cardinal Lubachivsky's accomplishments speakers listed the revitalization of the Church and its administrative structure during the 1990s, including the development of the renewed Lviv Theological Academy.

Cardinal Lubachivsky was born in Dolyna, western Ukraine, on June 24, 1914, to Yevstakhii and Anna Lubachivsky. He was ordained a priest of the Archeparchy of Lviv in 1938 by Metropolitan Sheptytsky and then continued his doctoral studies in theology in Austria.

Unable to return to Ukraine after World War II, he emigrated to the United States, where he continued his pastoral work, first as a priest at St. Peter and Paul Church in Cleveland beginning in 1949, and then from 1968 as a teacher at the St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Seminary in Washington. He taught at St. Basil's College in Philadelphia and St. Basil's Academy in Stamford, Conn., before being ordained archbishop of Philadelphia in 1979.

Pope John Paul II appointed the late UGCC leader coadjutor to Cardinal Slipyj in 1979. Upon Cardinal Slipyj's death in 1984, he took over as head of the UGCC. In 1985, Pope John Paul II gave him the title of cardinal.

The leadership of the UGCC officially returned to Lviv from its exile in Rome on March 30, 1991, an event immortalized by the simple act of Cardinal Lubachivsky kissing the ground at Lviv Airport after disembarking his plane.

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