Hryhoriy Khomyshyn

Blessed Hryhoriy Khomyshyn
Born 25 March 1867
Hadynkivtsi, Husiatyn, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
Austrian Empire
Died 17 January 1947(1947-01-17) (aged 79)
Lukyanivska Prison
Kiev, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union
Venerated in Roman Catholic Church,
Ukrainian Catholic Church
Beatified 27 June 2001, Lviv, Ukraine by Pope John Paul II
Feast December 28

The Blessed Hryhoriy Khomyshyn (also Hryhorij Khomyshyn, Ukrainian: Григорій Лукич Хомишин, Polish: Grzegorz Chomyszyn) was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishop and hieromartyr.

Khomyshyn was born on 25 March 1867 in the village of Hadynkivtsi, eastern Galicia, in what is now Ternopil Oblast.[1] He graduated from the seminary and was ordained a priest on 18 November 1893.[2] He continued to study theology at the University of Vienna from 1894 to 1899, and in 1902, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky appointed Khomyshyn the rector of the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv.[1] In 1904, he was consecrated as the bishop for Stanyslaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk) at St. George's Cathedral. Throughout his tenure, spanning over four decades, he was considered the second most powerful figure in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.[3][4]

Unlike Sheptytsky, Khomyshyn believed that the UGCC should adopt a more westward orientation, further emphasizing the Uniate Church's relationship with Rome.[5] This meant introducing Latinized practicies such as the Gregorian calendar and a strict adherence to clerical celibacy, which were met with controversy in his eparchy.[6][7]

During the 1930s, Khomyshyn was responsible for organizing the Ukrainian Catholic People's Party, which briefly held seats in the Sejm and Senate.[6] He is noted as being one of only a handful of members of the Catholic hierarchy in interwar Poland to publicly oppose anti-Semitism; his tolerance towards Galician Jews likely owing to his own experience as part of Poland's Ukrainian minority.[8][9] As a result of his moderate approach to Ukrainian nationalism, he would be labeled a "sellout" by the OUN and was left fearing for his life.[7][10]

Khomyshyn was first arrested in 1939 by the NKVD. A critic of the Soviet system, having called the occupying forces "fierce beasts animated by the devil,"[11] he was arrested again in April 1945, and was then deported to Kiev. In prison, he was tortured and advised to renounce the Union of Brest, which he refused to do.[12]

He died in the Lukyanivska Prison hospital in Kiev on 17 January 1947. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 27 June 2001, as one of Mykolai Charnets'kyi and the 24 companion martyrs.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 "Biographies of twenty five Greek-Catholic Servants of God" at the website of the Vatican
  2. 1 2 "Beatification of the Servants of God on June 27, 2001" at the website of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
  3. ↑ "The Structure of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church" at the Ukrainian Catholic University's Institute of Church History website
  4. ↑ John F. Pollard. The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914-1958. Oxford University Press, 2014. pg 306
  5. ↑ Stéphanie Mahieu, Vlad Naumescu. Churches In-between: Greek Catholic Churches in Postsocialist Europe. LIT Verlag, 2008. pg 48
  6. 1 2 Ivan Katchanovski, Zenon E. Kohut, Bohdan Y. Nebesio, Myroslav Yurkevich. Historical Dictionary of Ukraine. Scarecrow Press, 2013. pg 263-264
  7. 1 2 Myroslav Shkandrij. Ukrainian Nationalism: Politics, Ideology, and Literature, 1929-1956. Yale University Press, 2015. pg 31-32
  8. ↑ Joanna B. Michlic. Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present. University of Nebraska Press, 2006. pg 77-78
  9. ↑ Ronald Modras. The Catholic Church and Antisemitism: Poland, 1933-1939. Routledge, 2005. pg 360-361
  10. ↑ Matthew Feldman, Marius Turda, Tudor Georgescu. Clerical Fascism in Interwar Europe. Routledge, 2013. pg 66-68
  11. ↑ Pierre Blet. Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican. Paulist Press, 1999. pg 76-77
  12. ↑ Willem Adriaan Veenhoven, Winifred Crum Ewing, Stichting Plurale Samenlevingen. Case studies on human rights and fundamental freedoms: a world survey. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1976. pg 477
Catholic Church titles
Preceded by
Andrey Sheptytsky		 Eparch of Stanislaviv
1904-1947 		Succeeded by
Ivan Slezyuk
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