(born August 8, 1926, in the village of Boryslavka, Peremyshl Powiat, Lviv Voivodeship, now Poland – died December 12, 2004, in the city of Kolomyia).
Bishop of the Kolomyia-Chernivtsi Eparchy of the UGCC.
His grandfather Mykhailo and father Yakym were Sich Riflemen and good farmers. His mother, Ksenia Kulhavets by birth, was of Cossack lineage and a skilled gardener. There were 11 children in the family. The children received a good national and religious upbringing. The family subscribed to the children’s magazine “Dzinochok” (“Little Bell”), and they read books aloud in the evenings.
In 1933, Vasylyk started school. Until the fifth grade, he attended school in the neighboring semi-Polish village of Rybotychi, and after the sixth grade, he studied at the gymnasium in Peremyshl. As early as the third grade, he felt he wanted to be a priest. He led an ascetic lifestyle, tempering his body and soul. During the German occupation, he suffered from hunger. Due to financial hardship, he could not move with the gymnasium to Yaroslav, so he remained at the Peremyshl Cathedral and studied privately.
In the autumn of 1945, when Vasylyk had just come home to help dig potatoes, his native village, situated on the border of the Boyko and Lemko regions, was depopulated and burned by the Poles. The villagers took all their church treasures with them to the village of Barysh in the Buchach Raion of Ternopil Oblast. They were resettled in the houses of deported Poles.
After the Feast of Jordan in 1946, Vasylyk went to his aunt in Lviv, finished the 10th grade there, and enrolled in a feldsher (physician’s assistant) school. The young man was deeply shocked by the “Lviv Sobor,” which took place on March 8–9, 1946, in St. George’s Cathedral. He stopped attending that cathedral. He went to Havryil Kostelnyk and reproached him: “What have you done? How dare you betray the Church like that?” The poor man only looked sadly at the youth but said nothing. In Lviv, all Greek Catholic churches were transferred to the Moscow Patriarchate. Vasylyk chose the lesser evil: he began to attend a Polish church. He spoke Ukrainian with his spiritual advisors. But since the Polish church continued the Polonization of the Ukrainian population, he stopped going there as well. Priests who did not submit to Moscow Orthodoxy celebrated the Divine Liturgy underground. The Ukrainian Catholic Church became a catacomb church. These tragic events further strengthened Vasylyk’s desire to become a priest. He studied on his own. Meanwhile, he had meetings with OUN underground members, passed on his patriotic poems to a partisan bulletin, and bought medicines in pharmacies, which his father passed on to the partisans, as well as paper and ribbons for typewriters.
On April 1, 1947, he was arrested in Lviv at the post office. He endured severe torture. He was tried by a tribunal in prison along with his father and another underground member under Articles 54-1a and 11 of the Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code (“treason against the Motherland”); all received sentences of 10 years of imprisonment and 5 years of deprivation of civil rights.
Vasylyk was distressed that he would not be able, as usual, to confess on the Feast of the Holy Eucharist, but then, at night, a priest, Tsehelsky, was mistakenly thrown into the cell. He heard the confessions of all the prisoners, and Vasylyk served as his acolyte. It was a great grace of God, Vasylyk believed.
In September 1947, he was sent by transport to a camp near the town of Mykolaiv in the Lviv Oblast, where his father was also held. He worked in construction. At the end of the year, Vasylyk was transferred to the Lviv transit prison, and after Christmas 1948, he arrived by transport in Chelyabinsk. He worked in construction. A year later, he was sent to Bashkiria for logging, then to a stone quarry. Here, he became close with a Roman Catholic priest, Jozef Pukowinski, a Pole. In the spring of 1949, he was transferred to Dzhezkazgan, to the Pokrovskaya-39 copper mine, where he was caught in a cave-in, after which he refused to go down into the mine and was placed in a punishment cell.
On January 1, 1950, Bishop Viktor Novikov ordained Vasylyk as a deacon, which gave him the right to preach, prepare people for confession, and conduct prayer services. He was preparing for ordination at Easter, but during Great Lent, Vasylyk was transferred to Spassk, to the Valley of Death. Twenty thousand prisoners were held here, and two brigades worked solely on digging graves.
In 1952, Vasylyk dreamed that, as a bishop, he was celebrating the Divine Liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome at the tomb of St. Josaphat Kuntsevych. The dream came true 38 years later.
He was transferred to Olzheras in the Altai, where he built an oil refinery. He worked as a feldsher, saving prisoners as best he could. He encouraged priests to serve in the conditions of captivity, and he himself actively preached, for which he was sent to the punishment cell and, for six months, to a BUR (strict-regime barrack). Later, he served his sentence in the Omsk Oblast, camp No. 3. Here, he had the camp number “G-995.” He was friends with Dr. V. Karkhut, an expert on medicinal plants, treated the mentally ill, and even performed surgeries. For his Easter sermon in 1954, he was sent to the punishment cell for 10 days. He also worked as an artist and, in the punishment cell, painted a portrait of the camp chief’s son, for which the underground sentenced him to death. However, his fellow countrymen protected Vasylyk.
In the autumn of 1956, a commission released Vasylyk. He was sent by transport into exile to the village of Novooleksandrivka, Ustarsky Raion, Novosibirsk Oblast. He started work a month later—as a caretaker and shepherd of brucellosis-infected cows. He also became a pastor for the villagers, who had not seen a priest for 20 years and lived and died, by their own admission, “like cattle.”
In August 1956, permission came for Vasylyk to return to Ukraine, to the Buchach Raion in Ternopil Oblast, to his relatives. On November 10, 1956, in Lviv, Vasylyk passed the examination for the priesthood, and on November 18, his dream came true: he was ordained by Bishop Mykola Charnetsky, later recognized as a Blessed Hieromartyr. On the feast of the Archangel Michael (November 21), he celebrated his first Divine Liturgy in Buchach, secretly, of course. As an underground UGCC priest, he traveled throughout Galicia and Zakarpattia, luckily avoiding ambushes. At times, people would form a living circle around the priest, preventing his capture. For example, all night before Palm Sunday in 1957, he served in Dolishnia Perevoloka. In the morning, he heard the confession of a sick person and blessed branches, knowing the house was surrounded by police. After his sermon, they opened a window for him, but he was ashamed to flee, so he went through the door and surrendered to the police. The people then lay down under the wheels of the car. They listened only to the priest. After interrogation in Buchach (with swearing and beatings), Vasylyk’s residence permit was revoked, which threatened him with arrest as a vagrant for violating the passport regime. He did not stop serving. It took him six months to obtain that “serf stamp” in Mykytyntsi near Stanislav. On Easter, tired and sleepy, he was arrested in his parents’ house in Barysh. They beat him on the way. He was brought to Stanislav, and at the KGB, a theatrical meeting was staged with mockery. After a long, exhausting interrogation, he was thrown out onto the street, where they tried to hit him with a car. In Nadorozhna, when the police caught him, the bells were rung, people ran out and fought off the police, and the priest celebrated the Divine Liturgy. This detective-like life lasted for two years.
On January 22, 1959, Vasylyk was seized on the street in Stanislav. People gathered. Vasylyk revealed to them that he was a UGCC priest and preached for half an hour, calling the KGB agents bandits. The commissioners for religious affairs of the Stanislav Oblast, Bibyk, and of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, Vilkhovyi, tried to persuade Vasylyk to convert to Moscow Orthodoxy, but he rejected the offer. He was tried in the club of the village of Lysets. The witnesses unanimously defended their priest. The sentence was as he had dreamed: 5 years of imprisonment and a 5-year ban on living in Galicia.
They took Vasylyk to Mordovia, to station Yavas, to the 2nd camp unit, and in 1960, to the 1st camp, where Metropolitan Yosyf Slipyj was also imprisoned. In 1961, with the introduction of different regimes, Vasylyk, as a recidivist, was transferred to a particularly strict regime in Yavas, where the Blessed Hierarch was later brought. “From the Almighty I received such privileges that no student or postgraduate in freedom could have dreamed of,” Vasylyk said in his memoirs. “The Lord rewarded my sufferings a hundredfold! Had I known in freedom that such a meeting awaited me behind the barbed wire—I would have gone to these camps on foot without hesitation!” He was in the same cell with the Blessed Hierarch. On January 23, 1963, Y. Slipyj was pardoned and taken to Rome. They met again 29 years later...
At the end of 1963, Vasylyk was transferred to the 1st camp unit (Sosnovka). He was released on January 22, 1964, but with a ban on living in Galicia. He traveled half of Ukraine, finally registering his residence in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast, but a year later, his permit was revoked. Good people arranged a state job for Vasylyk: a collector of medicinal herbs. He collected them for 23 years, while at night he performed his priestly duties. He lived first near Lviv, then with his parents in Barysh, and later in Buchach.
On May 1, 1974, in the village of Vilkhivtsi, Zhydachiv Raion, Lviv Oblast, Bishop Yosafat Fedoryk ordained Vasylyk as a bishop. “My high spiritual rank did not grant me privileges. I continued to freeze, suffer from lack of sleep, walk on animal trails, and flee from pursuers,” says the bishop. Information about his asceticism was already reaching the world’s media.
In 1984, Vasylyk fell ill and lost his hearing. He was cured in Lithuania with the help of his camp friend, Father Pranas Račiūnas.
On August 4, 1985, in Lviv, the recently released Yosyp Terelya—head of the Committee for the Defense of the Faithful of the UGCC—gathered with Fathers Mykola and Hryhoriy Simkaily, Mykhailo Havryliv, a student of the Leningrad Theological Seminary, and Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk. They composed a declaration to Pope John Paul II about the long-suffering Church emerging from the underground. A copy was sent to M. Gorbachev. The declaration was later signed by Fathers Volodymyr Viytyshyn, Ivan and Taras Semkiv, and others—a total of 23 priests. Other bishops refused to sign the declaration, arguing that they could not put the Church at risk. The world learned of the declaration. Under threats and intimidation, three priests retracted their signatures. One bishop and 10 priests, under KGB pressure, wrote an “anti-declaration,” calling the signatories “extremists.” Vasylyk went to Kyiv and won a debate against KGB generals and colonels. They then launched anonymous slanderous letters against him.
On July 17, 1988, in Zarvanytsia, Vasylyk, in concelebration with many priests, celebrated an Archiepiscopal Divine Liturgy, in which nearly 30,000 faithful participated.
On September 17, 1988, Vasylyk was invited for a conversation with American congressmen who had come to Moscow. The conversation took place in the presence of five deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, who tried to disgrace the UGCC and its hierarchs. Vasylyk defended them with dignity. All six delegates were invited to an international symposium of journalists. “We used ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’ not as Gorbachev wanted,” the bishop later wrote.
On February 7, 1989, Bishop Vasylyk led a delegation of the UGCC to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. On May 16, on the eve of the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR, a large delegation of the UGCC, including Vasylyk, arrived in Moscow again with the intention of meeting M. Gorbachev. They were not received. They then declared a hunger strike on the Arbat. The world saw them. On the fourth day, they were met by deputy Yuri Khristoradnov, who gave them hope for the legalization of the UGCC. The hunger strike of the UGCC faithful lasted for six months.
In November 1989, on the eve of M. Gorbachev’s visit to the Vatican, permission for the registration of UGCC communities was announced. On January 8, 1990, the chairman of the Ivano-Frankivsk regional executive committee handed Vasylyk a document on the transfer of the Cathedral of the Holy Resurrection to the ownership of the UGCC.
In 1993, with the blessing of His Holiness Pope John Paul II, Vasylyk became the Bishop-Ordinary (ruling bishop) of the newly created Kolomyia-Chernivtsi Eparchy. The enthronement took place on October 31, 1993, in Kolomyia. In 1999, he was awarded the Order “For Merit” III degree.
In 2000, he initiated the construction of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the city of Kolomyia. On October 24, 2000, the rectorate of Seton Hall University, USA, awarded him an honorary doctorate of humane letters.
On May 1, 2004, the 30th anniversary of Vasylyk’s ordination as a bishop of the Catacomb Church was solemnly celebrated in Kolomyia.
Until the end of his days, the Confessor of the Faith, long-term prisoner of Moscow’s camps, Pavlo Vasylyk, tirelessly worked for the spread of Christ’s teaching and the spiritual growth of the flock entrusted to him, the development of church structures, and the training of worthy clergy. Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk ended his life’s journey on December 12, A.D. 2004, in the 79th year of his life.
Bibliography:
I.
Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk on his imprisonment and persecution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO4ucC6xEJ8 (1995)
From the history of the UGCC. Bishop Pavlo (Vasylyk) on the Church emerging from the underground https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO4ucC6xEJ8 (1995).
Memoirs of the Bishop-Ordinary of the Kolomyia-Chernivtsi Eparchy, His Grace Pavlo Vasylyk // Khrystyianskyi visnyk (Kolomyia), No. 7 (67). – May 1999. https://museum.khpg.org/1203111955
II.
Fr. Volodymyr Huk. Preosviashchennyi Vladyka Kyr Pavlo Vasylyk. [His Grace Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk]. Kolomyia, 1999. – 64 pp.
“Zhyttiepys yepyskopa Kolomyisko-Chernivetskoi yeparkhii Vladyky Pavla Vasylyka” [Biography of the Bishop of the Kolomyia-Chernivtsi Eparchy, His Grace Pavlo Vasylyk] // Khrystyianskyi visnyk (Kolomyia), No. 5 (115). – May 2004.
Fr. Zynoviy Karas. “Dopovid na Sviatkovii Akademii, prysviachenii 30-littiu Yepyskopskoi Khirotonii Vladyky Pavla Vasylyka” [Report at the Festive Academy dedicated to the 30th Anniversary of the Episcopal Consecration of His Grace Pavlo Vasylyk] // Khrystyianskyi visnyk (Kolomyia), No. 5 (115). – May 2004.
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. 87–91. https://museum.khpg.org/1120928037
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. 98–100; 2nd ed.: 2012, – pp. 110–111.
Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. April 27, 2004. Final reading on August 3, 2016.
