Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky (1865-1944)

Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky was the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from 1901 until his death. During his tenure, he led the Church through two world wars and seven political regimes: Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Soviet, German National Socialist (Nazi), and again Soviet. According to the historian Jaroslav Pelikan, “Arguably, Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky was the most influential figure… in the entire history of the Ukrainian Church in the twentieth century.” He was born in Galicia, then a part of Austria-Hungary, and baptized Roman Aleksander Maria. His family was from an aristocratic Ukrainian line, which in the nineteenth century had become Roman Catholic and French speaking.One of his brothers became a Studite monk, while another became a general in the Polish army.After school he served in the Austro-Hungarian army. He then studied law in Kraków and Wrocław, receiving his doctorate in 1888. Despite his father’s opposition, he entered a Basilian monastery in Dobromyl. That same year took the name Andrew. He then studied at the Jesuit Seminary in Kraków, receiving a doctoral degree in theology in 1894. In 1892 he was ordained a priest> He was made rector of the monastery of St. Onuphrius in Lviv in 1896. In 1899, following the death of Sylvester Cardinal Sembratovich, Sheptytsky was nominated by Emperor Franz Joseph to fill a vacant position as Ukrainian Greek Catholic Bishop of Stanyslaviv, and Pope Leo XIII concurred. A year later, following the death of Sembratovich’s successor, Sheptytsky was elevated, at the age of thirty-six, to Metropolitan Archbishop. After the outbreak of World War I, Metropolitan Sheptytsky was arrested by the Russians and imprisoned in various places in Ukraine and Russia. He was released in March 1918 and returned to Lviv from Russia. As a student he learned Hebrew in order to better relate to the Jewish community. During pastoral visits to Jewish villages he was sometimes met with the Torah. During World War II he harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued the pastoral letter, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” to protest Nazi atrocities. He strove for reconciliation between ethnic groups and wrote frequently on social issues and spirituality. He also founded the Studite and Ukrainian Redemptorist orders, a hospital, the National Museum, and the Theological Academy. He actively supported various Ukrainian organizations such as the Prosvita and in particular, the Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization, and donated a campsite in the Carpathian Mountains called Sokil, and became the patron saint of the Plast fraternity Orden Khrestonostsiv. He died in 1944 and is buried in St. George’s Cathedral in Lviv. (From Wikipedia)