Thirty-five years ago, on November 17, 1983, more than 300 bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States who had gathered at their national meeting issued a statement of condemnation of the Famine-Genocide of Ukraine of 1932-1933, known as the Holodomor.
The Holodomor was a genocide perpetrated by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, the National Catholic Conference of Bishops stated, noting that Stalin’s collectivization policies claimed the lives of at least 7 million lives, and were “motivated by the desire of the Soviet Union to destroy the national identity of the Ukrainian people.”
The statement called the Famine “comparable to other, better-known holocausts of our times” and asked that it not be forgotten, “not that the famine of hatred be kept alive, but rather that the human conscience may not be permitted to become hardened.”
The bishops asked that prayers be offered for the Church of Silence and for those Christians who cling so tenaciously to their faith in aggressively atheistic societies.
Bishop Basil H. Losten of the Stamford Eparchy of the Ukrainian Catholic Church submitted the statement, which was adopted as part of the conference’s official documentation. Among the other bishops who spoke in support of the statement were Cardinal Joseph Benardin of Chicago, Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, Bishop James D. Niedergeses of Nashville, Tenn., Bishop Stanislaus J. Brzana of Ogdensburg, N.Y., and Auxiliary Bishop Timothy J. Harrington of Worcester, Mass.
Bishop Basil, in speaking with Radio Liberty, said it was uncertain how many died as a result of the Famine, but noted that Stalin once told Churchill that the Soviet drive for agricultural collectivization had cost 10 million lives. The bishop also explained the activities and institutions of the Stamford Eparchy, including the seminary and museum.
The previous June, Bishop Basil had mailed out information packets on the Famine to 386 U.S. Catholic bishops, including the special issue dedicated to the Great Famine of The Ukrainian Weekly of March 20, 1983, a booklet published by the Ukrainian World Congress (known then as the World Congress of Free Ukrainians), as well as a copy of the May 23, 1983, issue of Time magazine’s essay “The Morals of Remembering” by Lance Morrow, who mentioned the Famine as one of the forgotten holocausts of the 20th century.
Source: “U.S. Catholic bishops condemn Great Famine as ‘genocide,’” The Ukrainian Weekly, November 27, 1983.