Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away and who would have though any more of his destiny?…Though he had done no wrong nor spoken any falsehood.” Isaiah 53: 3, 8, 9 These words of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah applied to the life of Jesus, equally apply to the life of our Blessed Martyr Bishop Vasyl Velychkovsky, C.Ss.R. Blessed Vasyl endured much suffering for the simple fact that he would
not deny his Catholic faith, his belief in Christ and his faithfulness to Christ’s Mystical Body, the Catholic Church. Throughout his life Blessed Vasyl was given many opportunities to make choices for his faith. He always chose to remain Faithful and True to the Gospel. He willingly gave himself up to the Soviet police when the time of his arrest came. When offered freedom if he would only deny the Church, he responded emphatically: “No, Never!” He received his sentence to die by firing squad with peace, accepting this as God’s holy will for him. When the sentence was later transmuted to ten years of hard labor in the coal mines of the Vorkuta region, he received this silently. Upon release from prison, he reassumes his pastoral work in the underground church in Lviv. Although he knew that to receive the ordination to the episcopacy meant certain persecution and death, he did not hide or avoid this, but rather went quickly to receive his martyr’s crown. Six years after he became bishop, again he is arrested. Failing to kill him during his prison sentence of three years, he is exiled and providentially comes to Canada where he dies a martyr’s death a year later – a death induced by all the chemicals and drugs he received from his latest prison term. Bishop Vasyl was born in 1903 in Stanislaviv to a priestly family. His school years were disrupted by the First World War after which he entered the Seminary in Lviv. After receiving his diaconate he joined the Redemptorists and became a great missionary. His missionary work took him across Western Ukraine throughout Halychyna, spending also seven years in Volyn among the Orthodox and emigrant Halychany. With the Soviet occupation of Ukraine during the Second World War, he is arrested for a procession he held in honor of our Mother of Perpetual Help. Because the people rose up in his defence the authorities released him under “house arrest”. When the Soviets finally return to Halychyna in 1944, a systematic persecution of the Ukrainian Catholic Church began. All the bishops and many priests were arrested and sentenced to lager-camps or to death. Father Velychkovsky was among them. After much interrogation (two years) he was sentenced to die by firing squad. In a few months this was changed to ten years of hard labor in prison camps. He survived his prison term. Upon his return to Ukraine he begins his work in Lviv as an underground priest in the then illegal Ukrainian Catholic Church. After Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky, who also spent eleven years in Soviet prison camps, had died in 1959, Father Velychkovsky was appointed bishop of this underground church. Unfortunately there was no other bishop to ordain him. In 1963 through the intercession of Pope John XXIII and President John Kennedy, Metropolitan Joseph Slipyj was released from eighteen years of imprisonment in labor camps. On his way to Rome he was given permission to say good-bye to one family member. He called for Fr. Velychkovsky to come to Moscow. Vasyl entered the Moscow hotel room, Metropolitan Slipyj began the rite of ordination to the episcopacy. He no sooner finished the rite as the door opened and Metropolitan Slipyj was taken to the airport and Rome. Bishop Vasyl Velychkovsky became the only living hierarch for the Ukrainian Catholic underground church. Upon him came the responsibility to lead this church in those persecuted times. He knew that this position was very dangerous but he accepted it as the will of God. Soon in 1964 he ordains a Redemptorist confrere, Fr. Volodymyr Sterniuk, to the episcopacy. He also ordains many priests for the underground church. As a bishop he had to be very careful not to expose himself and be arrested. In 1968 in preparation for Stalin’s 90th birthday, religious persecution was again intensified. The Bishop’s room was search several times and his religious artifacts and books were confiscated. In January of 1969 he was arrested for anti-soviet propaganda and received a harsh three year sentence in a prison in Komunarsk, Ukraine. Here he underwent chemical and psychological torture. Drugs were administered to cause heart disease. Eventually he died from these drugs. He was tortured physically often with electricity. This last imprisonment did not break his religious resolve, but it did break him physically and psychologically. A broken man he was exiled from Ukraine in January 1972. After a brief visit with his sister in Yugoslavia, he went to Rome to be with Cardinal Joseph Slipyj. From there his Redemptorist confrere, Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk of Winnipeg invited him to come and live with him. Thus in June of 1972 Bishop Vasyl Arrived in Winnipeg. For the first few months having recovered somewhat in his health, he tours the Ukrainian Catholic community in Canada and United States. However by the fall of that year he again became sick. On June 30 1973, he died in Winnipeg. God’s providence brought him to North America so that a modern martyr be buried on this soil. He is a word to the whole church today about faithfulness to the Gospel and to the Church. Although he suffered and was tortured in another land and another society, the presence of his relics in North America, in Winnipeg, brings new life to the church. He chose the pearl of great price, Christ himself, and for this he paid the full price, the gift of his life. Now he wears the glorious martyr’s crown.
