[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 155 (Friday, December 15, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2238]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E2238]]
           UKRAINIAN CARDINAL MYROSLAV LUBACHIVSKY 1914-2000)

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, December 15, 2000

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, Ohioans, particularly those of Ukrainian 
ancestry, were saddened to hear of the passing yesterday of Cardinal 
Myroslav Lubachivsky, the head of Ukraine's Greek Catholic Church. 
Cardinal Lubachivsky was born in 1914 in the town of Dolyna in the 
Western Ukrainian province of Galicia and died not far from there in 
the city of Lviv, where he served as Archbishop and Metropolitan for 
millions of Ukrainian Catholics worldwide, including many in Ohio. 
Although the Cardinal was born in Western Ukraine and served his people 
as their spiritual leader until his last days, he spent more than half 
his life outside his native land, including 33 years in the United 
States.
  Cardinal Lubachivsky left Ukraine in 1938 as a young priest to study 
in Austria. After the Second World War, he came to America where he 
spent more than twenty years serving as assistant pastor at Sts. Peter 
& Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood. 
There he celebrated mass, presided over the marriages of happy couples, 
baptized their newly-born infants and spoke the final words over the 
graves of thousands of his parishioners. He even drove the school bus 
for children attending the parish grade school. This scholarly, yet 
humble man seemed content to serve God and his fellow Ukrainian-
Americans in this quiet, unassuming way when unexpectedly he was 
elevated to be Metropolitan-Archbishop of Philadelphia. In 1980, he 
moved to the Vatican and in 1984, became worldwide head of the 
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church following the death of the saintly 
Cardinal Joseph Slipy.
  Joseph Slipy had become the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic 
Church in 1944 when Western Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet 
Union. Prior to that, Western Ukraine had been part of the Austrian 
Empire and Poland. Almost immediately, the Soviet Secret Police started 
carrying out Stalin's order to liquidate the Ukrainian Catholic Church. 
The entire clergy was either arrested or forced to renounce their 
faith. Most declined to do so and ended up in Siberia or were shot. 
Archbishop-Metropolitan Slipy spent 17 years in labor camps until Pope 
John XXIII finally negotiated his release in 1963. As a cardinal of the 
Catholic Church, Joseph Slipy went to work rebuilding his church in the 
underground in Ukraine and in places like Cleveland, Ohio where 
Myroslav Lubachivsky served as assistant pastor.
  In 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, His Eminence Myroslav 
Lubachivsky, a Cardinal and a U.S. citizen, returned in triumph to the 
city of Lviv to preside over the Ukrainian Catholic Church and its 
historic St. George's Cathedral. ``This native church of mine was 
resurrected and rose from the grave,'' he said at the time. Tens of 
thousands of Ukrainian Catholics, many weeping and singing hymns, lined 
the streets to greet their Cardinal and Archbishop-Metropolitan.
  Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky had one of the most extraordinary and 
fulfilling lives that spanned nearly the entire 20th Century. He served 
through some of the most difficult periods of that turbulent era and he 
lived to see his faith and the faith of millions of his parishioners 
rewarded with the restoration of his church, which not only survived 
enormous evil, but ultimately prevailed over it. I join in paying 
tribute to this great man and offer my condolences to all those in Ohio 
and throughout the world who benefited from his spiritual guidance and 
leadership and now mourn his passing. With his entire life a prayer, 
Cardinal Lubachivsky walked in faith and toward the light that now 
shines over people and leaders that long for a new tomorrow. May he 
rest in peace.

                          ____________________