Andrey Sheptytsky
Andrey Sheptytsky OSBM was a prelate and theologian of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church who served as Metropolitan of Galicia and Archbishop of Lviv from 1901 until his death in 1944. His tenure in office spanned two world wars and seven political regimes: Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Soviet, Nazi German, and again Soviet.
He was born as Roman Szeptycki in Prylbychi, a village outside of Lviv in Austrian Galicia, to on his father's side the Roman Catholic Szeptycki family who were part of the Polish szlachta of Ruthenian origin, and on his mother's side to the very famous in Poland Fredro family, who also were part of the Roman Catholic Polish szlachta. Although he was baptized in the Latin Church, Sheptytsky joined the Greek-Catholic Order of Saint Basil the Great in 1888, and took the monastic name Andrey. In 1892 he took his solemn vows and was also ordained to the deaconate and the priesthood. He went on to serve as a hegumen and seminary professor in the Basilian Order. In 1899 Sheptytsky was nominated by Emperor Franz Joseph to become the Bishop of Stanislau, and his consecration took place that year. In 1900 he was selected to be the Metropolitan Archbishop of Galicia, and he was enthroned in 1901.
Sheptytsky had a major role in raising Ukrainian national consciousness in modern-day western Ukraine and expanded the Ukrainian Catholic Church. He defended the interests of Ukrainians to the Austro-Hungarian House of Lords and Emperor Franz Joseph, established schools and a hospital society, and founded a seminary and the order of the Ukrainian Studite Monks. He also facilitated the appointment of the Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy for Ukrainian immigrants in Canada and the United States. Sheptytsky was a member of the National Council of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic after World War I, and when Galicia became part of Poland, he defended the Ukrainian Orthodox from persecution. He also became the main sponsor of the nascent Russian Greek Catholic Church in 1907 with the approval of the Holy See, and was responsible for the Russian Catholic hierarchy until shortly before his death.
According to the church historian Jaroslav Pelikan, "Arguably, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky was the most influential figure ...in the entire history of the Ukrainian Church in the twentieth century". Several locations and organizations in Ukraine have been named after him, including the city of Sheptytskyi in Lviv Oblast and the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum of Ukrainian culture in the city of Lviv. In 2015, Pope Francis recognized his life as one of heroic virtue by declaring him Venerable.
Life
Early life and education
He was born as Count Roman Aleksander Maria Szeptycki in Prylbychi, a village 40 km west/northwest of Lviv, in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then a crownland of the Austrian Empire. His parents were and Zofia née Fredro.The Szeptycki family was part of the Polish szlachta of Ruthenian origin. The maternal Fredro family was descended from the Polish nobility and, through his mother, the future Metropolitan Bishop was the grandson of Polish Romantic poet Aleksander Fredro. The Szeptycki family produced a number of bishops of both Catholic rites, most notably in the 18th century. Greek Catholic Bishops of Lviv and Metropolitans of Kiev were: Athanasius and Leo, was also bishop of Lviv. was a Greek Catholic bishop of Przemyśl and Nikifor was archimanrite of Lavriv. The Latin Catholic Bishop of Płock was, while his nephew Marcin was elected to the position, but did not take it. One of his brothers, Klymentiy Sheptytsky, M.S.U., became a Studite monk, and another, Stanisław Szeptycki, became a General in the Polish Army. He was 2 m 10 cm tall.
Sheptytsky was baptized in the Roman rite at the parish church in Bruchnal. Sheptytsky received his education first at home and then in Lviv and later in Kraków. He graduated from the St. Anna gymnasium in Kraków on 11 June 1883. His confessor was Jesuit, who was carrying out the reform of the Greek Catholic Basilian Order in Galicia. Probably under his influence, Sheptyskiy made the decision to join the Basilians, which, however, provoked opposition from his father. Hence in 1883 he went to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army but after a few months he fell sick and was forced to abandon it.
Instead, he went to study law in Breslau. There he was a member of the Literary and Slavic Society run by, as well as the Upper Silesian Society and the Polish Academicians' Reading Room. With his brother Alexander, he founded the Polish-Catholic Student Theological Society "Societas Hosiana" in 1884. From the 1885/6 academic year, he continued his studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, at which time he changed his nationality declaration from "Polish" to "Ruthenian". In April and May 1886 he visited Rome. From November to December 1887 he stayed in Kyiv and then in Moscow. Together with his mother and brother Leone he was granted an audience on March 24, 1888, with Pope Leo XIII at the Vatican. The Pope blessed his intention to join the Basilians, and on May 19, 1888, he received his doctorate.
According to his biographer Fr. Cyril Korolevsky, Sheptytsky's lifelong dream of creating the Russian Greek Catholic Church as a means of reuniting the Russian people with the Holy See goes back at least to his first trip to Russia in 1887. Afterwards, Sheptytsky "wrote some reflections" between October and November 1887, and expressed his belief, "that the Great Schism, which became definitive in Russia in the fifteenth century, was a bad tree, and it was useless to keep cutting the branches without uprooting the trunk itself, because the branches would always grow back." Sheptytsky likely spoke about his desire to bring Russia to Catholicism during his audience with Pope Leo XIII in 1888, and it was one of the factors that influenced his decision to become an Eastern Catholic despite his family's Polish and Latin Church background. A monk who later became his aide wrote in 1933 that Sheptytsky "never turned his eyes away from the conversion of Russia."
Religious and political life
Sheptytsky became a novice at the Basilian monastery in Dobromyl on May 29, 1888. He took the name Andrey, after the younger brother of Saint Peter, Andrew the Apostle, considered the founder of the Byzantine Church and also specifically of the Ukrainian Church. Beginning in 1889, he studied Ukrainian there under. He then studied at the, passing the exam in 1894. Sheptytsky became a professed member of the Order of Saint Basil the Great on August 13, 1889, and took his solemn vows on August 11, 1892. He was ordained a deacon and a priest on August 27 and 28, 1892, in Przemyśl. He was made hegumen of the Monastery of St Onuphrius in Lviv in 1896. In 1898, he took up the post of professor of moral and dogmatic theology at the Basilian seminary in Krystynopol. There he founded the Studite Order, based on the rule of St. Theodore the Studite, which had been introduced to the Kievan Rus' in the 11th century. The formation of the Studite order was part of Sheptytsky's effort to restore Byzantine traditions within the Ukrainian Church and to link modern monasticism with the historic Kievan Rus'. He also hoped that it would make the monasticism of Ukrainian Greek Catholics more like that of the Orthodox.In 1899, following the death of Cardinal Sylwester Sembratowicz, Sheptytsky was nominated by Emperor Franz Joseph to fill the vacant position of Greek Catholic Bishop of Stanyslaviv, and Pope Leo XIII concurred. Thus he was consecrated as bishop in Lviv on 17 September 1899 by Metropolitan Julian Sas-Kuilovsky assisted by Bishop Chekhovych and Bishop Weber, the Latin-Rite auxiliary of Lviv. On February 5 of that year, he received a doctorate in theological sciences in Rome, nostrified at the Faculty of Theology of the Jagiellonian University. A year later, following the death of Julian Sas-Kuilovsky, Sheptytsky was appointed, at the age of thirty-six, Metropolitan of Halych, Archbishop of Lviv and Bishop of Kamenets-Podolsk; he was enthroned on 17 January 1901. From February 1901, he sat with the House of Lords of the Imperial Council in Vienna with the title of secret counselor. He also became deputy speaker of the Galician Diet, a position he held until 1912.
He was active in promoting the revival and expansion of the Eastern Catholic Churches in the territory of Russian Empire, visiting incognito that country several times and secretly ordaining bishops and priests there. He also took an active part in the Velehrad congresses. He also strove for the revival of the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church, and to this end contacted important leaders of the movement for Belarusian nationalism, including Ivan Lutskevich.
Sheptytsky supported the Ukrainian national movement, founding a Greek Catholic seminary in Stanislaviv, supported the opening of a Ukrainian gymnasium there, and a Ukrainian university and hospital in Lviv. He sponsored an exhibition of Ukrainian artists in Lviv in 1905, led a Ukrainian pilgrimage to Palestine, and led a Ukrainian delegation to Emperor Franz Joseph seeking reform of the electoral law. At the same time, he sought to prevent Polish-Ukrainian nationalist conflicts in Galicia. In 1904, he issued a pastoral letter to Polish Greek Catholics, urging them to love their own nation and warning against harming others under the guise of patriotism. In 1908, he harshly condemned the assassination of Galician governor Andrzej Kazimierz Potocki by Ukrainian student.
Sheptytsky visited North America in 1910 where he met with Ukrainian Greek Catholic immigrant communities in the United States; attended the twenty-first International Eucharistic Congress in Montreal; toured Ukrainian communities in Canada; and invited the Redemptorist fathers ministering in the Byzantine rite to come to Ukraine.
In the spring of 1914, the Austrian government lobbied for the Holy See to make Sheptytsky a cardinal, but this was not done.