(born September 24, 1922, in Kraków, Poland – died October 4 (or 11?), 2007, in Stebnyk, Lviv Oblast).
Priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
His parents were socialists. His father, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky, Petro-Ivan, a military man, was killed in 1926 in the “civil war,” and his mother, Lubomirska, Sofia-Wanda, a historian, died at the same time. The child was brought to his grandfather in the village of Obertyn (now Tlumach Raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast). In 1932, he was sent to the Jesuit gymnasium in Khyriv, where he studied for two years. From there, he was sent to the Basilian Institute in Buchach, from which he graduated in 1938. In the same year, he entered the School of Tropical Medicine in Belgium, graduating in 1942. He refused to join Rommel’s army. To avoid arrest, he left for Galicia, but in 1942, he was nevertheless arrested and imprisoned in Chortkiv. He was released on September 24 through the efforts of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and Princess Sapieha, who lived in Bilche Zolote (now Borshchiv Raion, Ternopil Oblast), where he then went. In Lviv, on the advice of the Metropolitan, he entered the theological seminary. A year later, when Heryliuk-Kupchynsky was wanted by the Gestapo, Sheptytsky hid him in a monastery in Zhovkva. On October 14, he was transferred to Bishop Khomyshyn at the Stanislaviv Seminary, from which he graduated in 1945. Just before his ordination, on the night of April 15, the bishop was arrested.
In May 1945, the occupying authorities created an Initiative Group led by Havryil Kostelnyk for the transition from the Greek Catholic Church to Moscow Orthodoxy. Any priest who did not sign was arrested. Heryliuk-Kupchynsky, not waiting for his conscription into the Soviet army, went underground. He worked together with Hegumen Roman Bakhtalovsky, a Redemptorist. They organized four stations in Stanislaviv where one could celebrate the Divine Liturgy, get married, or confess, as well as four in Kolomyia, two in Horodenka, in Sniatyn, in Delyatyn, and in Kosiv. In Kolomyia, they also organized a monastery of the Sisters of Our Mother of Perpetual Help.
Heryliuk-Kupchynsky participated in the production and distribution of leaflets against the liquidation of the UGCC: “God is with us, hold on! Do not sign for Moscow Orthodoxy!”; “Do not bow down to the god Baal.”
To inform Pope Pius XII about what was happening in Galicia, Father Bakhtalovsky wrote a letter in French. Heryliuk-Kupchynsky, as a native of Kraków, registered with the Polish Committee to leave for Poland. But the day before his departure, on May 8, 1946, he was arrested in Lviv. The letter was translated, and an investigation began with brutal beatings. After 10 days, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky was transported to Kyiv. The investigation continued while he was held in the internal prison of the NKVD. On October 14, 1946, he was sentenced by a military tribunal under Article 58/20—“anti-Soviet agitation – an attempt to commit a crime.” He was accused of espionage for the Vatican. The sentence was 10 years of imprisonment and 5 years of deprivation of rights.
After the trial, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky spent three months in the Lukyanivka prison in a cell with the Bishop of Peremyshl, Professor of Dogmatics Kotselovsky. He studied all of dogmatics with him. On December 31, 1946, the bishop ordained Heryliuk-Kupchynsky as a deacon, intending to ordain him as a priest on New Year’s Day. But after lunch, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky was transferred to a labor camp in Sviatoshyn, and the bishop to a camp for the disabled, where he died.
At that time, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky weighed only 39 kg and was “non-transportable.” It was not until March 1948 that he was taken to Vetlag in the Kirov Oblast for logging. However, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky worked in the medical unit of the zone.
After a two-week transport in freight cars, on December 19, 1949, he was brought to Karaganda. He worked in the medical unit. People were dying en masse, and there was nothing to treat them with. Subsequently, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky was admitted to the central hospital with meningitis, had two concussions, three spinal surgeries, and finally, tuberculosis of the lungs. At one point, he lost his memory and spent half a year recovering it. He worked in the hospital, specializing in tuberculosis.
Heryliuk-Kupchynsky was released in January 1955 and placed in a home for the disabled in Karaganda. Through the regional health department, he got a job in the clinical laboratory of the city hospital. He then worked at the sanitary-epidemiological station for malaria control, in the city tuberculosis dispensary, and at the department of tuberculosis. He conducted laboratory work with students on the microbiology of tuberculosis.
In December 1957, Bishop Chernetsky ordained Heryliuk-Kupchynsky as a priest. In addition to his medical work, he secretly served Ukrainians in the Greek Catholic rite and Germans and Poles in the Roman Catholic rite, in private homes. Sometimes, Russians also came.
In 1957, he traveled to Ukraine on vacation for the first time.
In May 1968, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky arrived in Yaremche and got a job in a sanatorium laboratory for the microbiology of tuberculosis. He later transferred to the regional tuberculosis dispensary, where he dealt with the microbiology of tuberculosis and luminescent microscopy. The Ivano-Frankivsk Medical Institute became interested in him and invited him to the department of tuberculosis. But for three years, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky did not have a residence permit there. He moved to the town of Bolekhiv, where he worked at the Dolyna Raion Tuberculosis Hospital (village of Hoshiv) as a specialist in the microbiology of tuberculosis. At work, he was treated well, but the KGB did not let him out of their sight. To ensure he had no time for priestly work, they loaded him with two full-time positions.
In 1974, in connection with the arrest of two underground bishops for a letter to the Pope, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky was interrogated every Saturday in Ivano-Frankivsk for seven months, from May to September. There were denunciations about his political statements. But since prosecutor Hrytsyuk’s wife worked with Heryliuk-Kupchynsky at the department of tuberculosis and had used his diagnostics for her dissertation, the prosecutor closed the case, which already had 80 printed pages, with the resolution: “Every person has the right to their own convictions, and in the Soviet Union, people are not tried for their convictions.”
He communicated with Panas ZALYVAKHA, Vasyl ROMANIUK, Yaroslav LESIV, and Vyacheslav CHORNOVIL.
In 1982, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky retired. He bought a quarter of a house, two rooms in Bolekhiv, and worked in the hospital.
In December 1987, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky had a conversation with Kolesnikov, the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Religious and Cult Affairs, Ovsyannyk (or Ovsyanko), the commissioner of the regional committee, Yuzef Frantsevych Yizhetsky, the chief lecturer on atheism at the regional committee and a doctor of historical sciences, and a KGB colonel. They discussed the restoration of the UGCC, but without subordination to the Pope. Heryliuk-Kupchynsky rejected such a possibility.
With the legalization of the UGCC, he worked in the church in the village of Lysovychi near Morshyn.
From February 15, 1990, Heryliuk-Kupchynsky was the pastor of the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the town of Stebnyk. From 1990 to 1994, he taught the Law of God in schools, having up to 38 hours a week, until it was replaced by the subject “Christian Ethics” and pedagogical education was required. He oversaw the repair of the church, organized the societies “Ukrainian Youth for Christ” and “Apostleship of Prayer,” the Marian Sodality of Youth, and a men’s brotherhood, ran a Sunday school for children, and prepared 15 candidates for the priesthood.
Bibliography:
Fr. Petro Heryliuk-Kupchynsky. Viryu v Boha. Propovidi, skladeni na osnovi povchan yepyskopa, rektora Katolytskoho universytetu v m. Budapeshti d-ra Tihamera Tota. [I Believe in God. Sermons based on the teachings of the bishop, rector of the Catholic University in Budapest, Dr. Tihamér Tóth]. Lviv: Vyd-vo ottsiv Vasyliian “Misioner,” 1996. – 320 pp.
Khrystos i yunak. Na osnovi lystiv yepyskopa d-ra Tihamera Tota do studentiv. [Christ and the Youth. Based on the letters of Bishop Dr. Tihamér Tóth to students]. Translated from Polish by Fr. Petro Heryliuk-Kupchynsky. Lviv: Vyd-vo ottsiv Vasyliian “Misioner,” 1997. – 170 pp.
Aniziia Onyshchak. “Osoblyva misiia” [A Special Mission]. Halytska zoria, No. 129 (1417), Drohobych. 1999. – November 13.
KHPG Archive: Interview with Fr. Petro-Yosafat Heryliuk-Kupchynsky on January 31, 2000, in Stebnyk.
Mizhnarodnyi biohrafichnyi slovnyk dysydentiv krain Tsentralnoi ta Skhidnoi Yevropy y kolyshnoho SRSR. T. 1. Ukraina. Chastyna 1. [International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1.]. Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Liudyny,” 2006. – pp. 201–204. https://museum.khpg.org/1121096882;
Rukh oporu v Ukraini: 1960–1990. Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk [The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide] / Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010. – pp. 187–188; 2nd ed.: 2012, – pp. 206–207.
Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. June 28, 2004. Corrections made on May 12, 2005, sent by L. Starosolsky based on words from the ailing priest.
