Josyf Slipyj


Josyf Slipyi was a Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and a cardinal of the Catholic Church.

Life

Genealogy

Josyf Slipyj's father, Joannes Slipyj, was born 17 February 1892 in Zazdrist into a family of local Ukrainian farmers. His mother was Anastasia Dychkovska, the daughter of Roman Dychkovski and Barbara Janisiewicz, also from Zazdrist. Both clans were well rooted in the village and can be traced there as far back as existing records allow. Interestingly, but not uncommon, one of Cardinal Josyf's great grandfathers, Adalberti Slominski, was of the Roman Catholic rite. Cardinal Slipyj's older sister, Francisca, was also baptized in the Latin rite by Rev. Martinus Serwacki on 17 February 1875. At the time the family was living at house #75, Zazdrist.

Early years

Josyf Slipyj was born in the village of Zazdrist, Galicia, then a crownland of Austria-Hungary. Unlike most Ukrainian Catholic priests at the time, Josyf Slipy did not come from a sacerdotal family, which was considered an elite, educated caste among Ukrainians, but had common roots instead. As a teen Josyf studied at the gymnasium in Ternopil and then at the Lviv Greek-Catholic Seminary and Innsbruck University in Austria, before being ordained a priest on 30 June 1917. From 1920 to 1922, he studied in Rome at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, the Collegio Angelico, and the Pontifical Gregorian University. He returned to Lwów, by then part of Second Polish Republic.
After a short pastoral assignment, in 1922 Slipyi became a professor of dogmatic theology at the Lviv Holy Spirit Seminary. In 1926 he became the rector of the seminary and actively participated in its development. In 1923 he established the Theological Academic Society, for which he wrote the articles of association and enrolled scholars. In the same year, he became an editor of the quarterly Bohosloviia. On 14 April 1929 Slipyi became the first rector of the Lviv Theological Academy.
In 1926, Slipyj became a member of the supervisory board of the Lviv National Museum, and in 1931 Deputy Chairman of the Ukrainian Catholic Union. Due to his scholarly merits and active development of Ukrainian cultural and religious life, Slipyi became a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. At this time he made numerous research trips to Western Europe, Holy Land, took part in union congresses in Velegrad, Prague, Pinsk and 1936 he organized a union congress in Lviv.

Soviet and Nazi occupation

On 22 December 1939, with the blessing of Pope Pius XII, Slipyj was ordained archbishop of Serrae and Coadjutor Archbishop of Lviv with the right of succession. The ordination was conducted by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky in secrecy due to the Soviet presence and the political situation.
Metropolitan Andrey reorganized the Eastern Catholic hierarchy within the Soviet Union, and on 9 October 1939, he named Slipyj the Ukrainian Catholic Apostolic Exarch of Great Ukraine. He did this on his own authority because there was limited contact with the Holy See, and it was not until December 1941 that he received a letter from the Vatican recognizing his appointments for the Soviet territory.
On 30 June 1941, Josyf Slipyj supported the Act of Declaration of Ukrainian State. Slipyj became the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church on 1 November 1944, following Sheptytsky's death.
After Soviet troops captured Lviv, Slipyj was arrested along with other bishops in 1945 by the NKVD, convicted to penal servitude, allegedly for collaboration with the Nazi regime. This was the first step in the planned liquidation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church by Soviet authorities. After being jailed in Lviv, Kyiv, and Moscow, he was sentenced by a Soviet court to eight years of hard labor in the Siberian Gulag.
At this time Soviet authorities forcibly convened an assembly of 216 priests, and on 9 March 1946 and the following day, the so-called "Synod of Lviv" was held in St. George's Cathedral. The Union of Brest, the council at which the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church formally entered into ecclesiastic communion with the Holy See, was revoked. The Church was forcibly "rejoined" to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Slipyj rejected any offers of conversion into Orthodoxy and was sentenced serially in 1953, 1957, 1962, thus being imprisoned for a total of 18 years in camps in Siberia and Mordovia. Slipyj spent five years in Maklakovo, where he wrote a multi-volume history of the Catholic Church in Ukraine.
According to Mykola Posivnych, Josyf Slipyj saw his imprisonment years as lost years. He was devastated since the best years of his life in terms of productivity, Slipyj had to spend among criminals, investigators, and jailers. Numerous times he went through illnesses as well as having his legs and hands broken and frostbitten.
Slipyj's prison writings managed to circulate. In 1957 Pope Pius XII sent him a congratulatory letter on the 40th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood. It was confiscated, and also on account of his circulating writings, he was sentenced to seven more years in prison.

Release to Rome and honors from the Vatican

On 23 January 1963, he was freed by Nikita Khrushchev's administration after political pressure from Pope John XXIII and United States President John F. Kennedy. He arrived in Rome on 9 February 1963 in time to participate in the Second Vatican Council.
Beginning in 1963 many Ukrainian bishops lobbied for Slipyj to be named patriarch, but Pope Paul VI refused, instead creating the new office of major archbishop and appointing Slipyj as its first incumbent on 23 December 1963.
In 1949 Slipyj had been secretly named a cardinal by Pope Pius XII, but this would have expired in 1958 when that pope died.
On 25 January 1965 Pope Paul VI named Slipyj a cardinal and appointed him Cardinal-Priest of Sant'Atanasio. At the time he was the 4th cardinal in Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church history. He was given a red koukoulion at the consistory as well as a galero.
Because he was major archbishop, he was cardinal priest instead of being in the then-new rank of cardinal patriarch. His successors in Ukraine, whether cardinals or not, have used the title of major archbishop.
He did not participate in the 1978 papal conclaves in August and October, being past the age of 80 then.
On the first occasion of an audience with Pope John Paul II, the Pope greeted Cardinal Slipyj first, which was contrary to protocol.

Reorganization of UGCC life

From the start of his arrival in Rome the Major Archbishop strove to organize the self-management of the local Ukrainian Catholic Church, headed by the patriarch. This idea was not supported by the Apostolic See.
In 1968, 1970, 1973 and 1976 Cardinal Slipyj visited countries in Europe, America, Asia and Australia in order to strengthen the ties with the Ukrainian diaspora overseas, and to reinvigorate the religious life of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church abroad. During these years he also took part in three international Eucharistic Congresses.
In 1977, Slipyj consecrated Ivan Choma, Stefan Czmil and Lubomyr Husar as bishops without approval of the pope. These consecrations caused much annoyance to the Roman Curia as episcopal consecrations without papal permission were considered illicit in the Canon Law in force at the time.
As a Major Archbishop with Patriarchal rights, Slipyj gathered a number of synods of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The most significant ones took place in 1969, 1971 and 1973. During the last Synod, the constitution of the UGCC patriarchal arrangement was adopted. Slipyj published his ordinances in "Evangelicum of the Major Archbishop of the Byzantine-Ukrainian rite" starting from 1964.
In Rome, he bought and rebuilt church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus for Ukrainian Catholics. On the territory of church both museum and hostel were founded. In 1967–1968, the church of Santa Sofia on Via Boccea was built in Rome at his orders.
In 1960 he revitalized the Ukrainian Theological Scientific Society in exile and restored the publishing of "Bohoslovia" in 1963 and the journal "Dzvony" in 1976.
In 1963 Slipyj organized the Ukrainian Catholic University of St. Clement with an academic publishing house.

Death and burial

Although Slipyj was banned from entering Ukraine by the leaders of the USSR, including Nikita Khrushchev, nevertheless he refused to give up his Soviet passport.
He died in Rome on 7 September 1984. His body lay in state at the church of Santa Sofia on Via Boccea; Pope John Paul II visited to pay his respects. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, his relics were returned to St. George's Cathedral in Lviv, and were reburied there on 27–29 August 1992.
His cause for canonisation has been introduced at Rome.

Intellectual interests

In his research work he concentrated on approximating the scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas to the requirements of Eastern Theology. Slipyj wrote a number of dogmatic works on the importance of the Holy Trinity, the origin of the Holy Spirit and Holy Sacraments, among which are:
  • Die Trinitatslehre des byzantinischen Patriarchen Photios, 1921
  • De principo spirationis in SS. Trinitate, 1926
  • On the Holy Sacrament, 1953
  • Die Auffassung des Lebens nach dem Evangelium und I.Briefe des Hl. Johannes, 1965
He also covered historical and ecumenical topics.
In 1968-1976 all of Josyf Slipyj's works were gathered and published as a work of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Rome with the title Opera omnia Kyr Josephi Archiepiscopi Maioris et Cardinalis / Твори кир Йосифа Верховного архиєпископа і кардинала.

Honors, commemoration and monuments

Honors