Turning the pages back... June 18, 1989 (06/12/05)

Turning the pages back...

June 18, 1989

Sixteen years ago, an estimated 150,000 Ukrainian Catholics in Ukraine participated in public services on June 18, 1989, to pray for the legalization of their Church. News of the action came from Ukrainian Catholic Church officials in Rome. The day of June 18 was designated by Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, as an international day of prayer for the legalization of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ukraine.

Services were held in Lviv, Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk and many towns and villages throughout Ukraine as well as in Moscow, reported the Ukrainian Press Bureau in Rome. The largest crowd was in the town of Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine. Some 100,000 of the town's 275,000 citizens participated in the public services.

Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk told Ukrainian Catholic Church officials that he and the Revs. Mykola Simkailo, Hryhorii Simkailo, Volodymyr Vytyshyn and Yosyf Moroz were scheduled to officiate at the services. However, militia and KGB detained the clergy. Only the Rev. Mykola Simkailo was able to break away from detention and lead the faithful. Bishop Vasylyk and the other priests were taken by car to an area outside Ivano-Frankivsk and left there.

The Rev. Simkailo was scheduled to be in court June 22 on charges of public disturbance for officiating at the ceremony.

While attempting to hold public services for a small crowd of Ukrainian Catholics in Kyiv, the Rev. Mykhailo Havryliv and several faithful were publicly beaten by the militia and KGB. According to eyewitnesses, two officials publicly gave the order to beat the priest and faithful. Reports confirmed that the beatings were severe. The Rev. Havryliv was taken away by officials and there was no immediate word on his condition or whereabouts.

In Moscow, services were led by the Rev. Yaroslav Lesiv. In Lviv, services were led by the Revs. Petro Zeleniukh, Ivan Lopatchak and Mykhailo Voloshyn. The Rev. Mykhailo Nyskohus - a formerly Russian Orthodox priest who had recently converted to Ukrainian Catholicism and was ordained a Ukrainian Catholic priest by Archbishop Volodymyr Sterniuk, the official representative of Cardinal Lubachivsky in Lviv - held services in his former Russian Orthodox parish in Stara Sil.

"From the reports we have received, we estimate that at least 150,000 Ukrainian Catholic faithful publicly attended Ukrainian Catholic services on June 18," said Bishop Vasylyk to Ukrainian Catholic Church officials in Rome. "Our people came to show that they are Ukrainian Catholics and that they want their Church to be legalized," he added.

Source: "150,000 Catholics throughout Ukraine pray for legalization of Church," The Ukrainian Weekly, June 25, 1989, Vol. LVII, No. 26.

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