John Sianchuk

Blessed Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky, C.SS.R. and Companions is an account of the lives and deaths of 25 members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine who were beatified (declared "Blessed") by Pope John Paul II in 2001. The bulk of the book focuses on four men, two bishops and two priests, who were members of the Redemptorist Order, but there are short biographies of all the martyrs (bishops, priests, religious sisters, and laymen) at the end of the book.

A quick history lesson, Western Ukraine, also known as Galicia, was part of the Austrian Empire until 1919, when it became part of Poland. It's residents were Catholics who celebrated the same liturgy as the Orthodox but who recognized the authority of the Pope. Its spiritual capital was and is Lviv. This Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church found itself stuck between the Orthodox Russians, who felt they had fallen away and the Poles, who wanted to assimilate the Ukrainians into good Poles in part by making them join the Western Catholic tradition. The Ukrainians just wanted to keep on doing what they were doing. World War II only made things worse, because the Soviets wanted the Church done away with entirely. A good chunk of this book describes the ways they went about trying to do this. But it also tells of lives given up for the betterment of the locals and the ways in which early 20th century Ukrainian nationalism expressed itself.

There is much talk to today about ISIS/Daesh and the evils it perpetrates, but this is nothing new. Evil has always been with us, and when it comes down to it the Soviets and the Nazis could be just as disgustingly brutal as today's Islamic terrorists. Blessed Zenon Kovalyk's mock crucifixion (he was not only nailed to the wall but also had a fetus stuffed in his abdomen) bears that out. The book suffers a bit by being written for the Ukrainian diaspora by the Ukrainian diaspora, with some assumptions made and terms used that make it less accessible than it might have been. But this is an important book on an important and increasingly relevant subject.

For those with an interest in Ukrainian history, 20th century Christian persecutions, or Eastern Catholicism. Highly recommended.… (más)