Leader of Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church completes pastoral visit to Canada (03/16/03)

Leader of Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church completes pastoral visit to Canada

by Oksana Zakydalsky

TORONTO - Major Archbishop and Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the leader of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, made a pastoral visit to three provinces in Canada - Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec - on February 6-24.

There are more than 500,000 Ukrainian Catholics in Canada and, as the purpose of a pastoral visit is to make contact with the faithful, Cardinal Husar had an extremely busy and varied schedule. He came to Canada on the invitation of Archbishop Michael Bzdel, metropolitan of Canada, and Bishop Cornelius Pasichny, eparch of Eastern Canada. The 19-day visit included the cities of Winnipeg, Ottawa, Hamilton, Toronto and Montreal.

Cardinal Husar was born in 1933 in Lviv and left Ukraine with his family in 1944. The family spent four years in a refugee camp in Austria, where the future cardinal became an active Plast member, a relationship he maintains to this day. In 1949 the family immigrated to the United States.

He completed studies in philosophy at the Ukrainian Catholic College of St. Basil the Great in Stamford, Conn., in 1954, continuing theological studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington. He was ordained in 1958, received a master's degree in philosophy from Fordham University and served for a time as pastor of the Kerhonkson, N.Y., parish (known as the Soyuzivka church).

In 1972 Father Husar went to Rome, where he completed his theological studies with a doctoral dissertation on Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and entered the Studite order. In 1977 he was ordained a bishop by Cardinal Josyf Slipyj. In 1992, as archimandrite of the Studite Order, he led his monastic community to Ukraine, where he served with Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky and, after the death of Cardinal Lubachivsky at the end of 2000 became his successor as head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

He was named to the College of Cardinals by Pope John Paul II in February 2001 and that summer, welcomed the pope to Ukraine.

In metro Toronto, an area with myriad Ukrainian institutions and many churches, Cardinal Husar had an extremely busy schedule - parish visits and celebrations at the churches of St. Nicholas, St. Demetrius and the Holy Dormition Church.

He also spoke to the children at two Ukrainian Schools, St. Demetrius and Cardinal Josyf Slipyi. The latter visit had a personal dimension as he shared with the children his memories of the school's patron, Patriarch Slipyi, with whom he had worked in Rome. Cardinal Husar made an unscheduled visit to St. Vladimir's Institute, which is run under the aegis of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada and houses, apart from the student residence, the Ukrainian Museum, the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Center, the Peter Jacyk Program and the Canadian Friends of Rukh. To each of these, the cardinal devoted both time and attention.

The Toronto visit included a grand banquet in Mississauga, attended by about 1,200 people, where the Church leader was welcomed by the mayor. Cardinal Husar left Toronto on February 24 for Great Britain, where two days later he marked his 70th birthday.

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