ALARMING reports of the renewed persecution of the Ukrainian Catholic Church have led a Brisbane priest to attempt to contact his former colleagues when he visits the region this month.
Parish priest of the Ukrainian Byzantine Rite’s Protection of Our Lady Parish, Woolloongabba, Fr Jaroslav Pasok, who left last Tuesday to visit his parents in neighbouring Slovakia, said many of his former classmates were now professors and deans at the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in the city of Lviv.
The campus of this, the only Catholic university in the former Soviet Union, also includes the Greek Catholic Seminary of the Holy Spirit.
Fr Pasok is concerned many of these people may be in danger since the appointment of a new pro-Moscow governing coalition by Ukraine’s parliament in March.
“I’m hearing that the Government is starting to say once again that Catholics are dangerous and not to be trusted,” the Ukrainian Catholic priest said.
“One old argument they’re bringing up from past persecutions is that Catholics look to the Pope as their head so cannot be governed.”
Fr Pasok’s mission to the Ukraine comes as UCU rector Fr Borys Gudziak prepares to visit Australia next month to run Australia’s Ukrainian Catholic priests’ annual retreat.
During the visit, Fr Gudziak will also present a series of awareness-raising lectures in Australia’s southern states about the situation in the Ukraine.
Fr Gudziak arrives in Sydney on July 20 and will be in Australia until August 8.
The outspoken UCU rector is under pressure from Ukraine’s pro-Soviet Government for his opposition to increasing religious persecution.
Earlier this year Fr Gudziak sent a memorandum to Ukrainian Catholic communities around the world detailing examples of hostile actions towards the Church by the country’s intelligence agency the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
In the memorandum he said the SBU activities had no precedents in Ukraine since its independence in 1991.
Among incidents detailed were the cutting of electricity to the UCU (thus restricting its ability to communicate with the outside world), a visit to the rector by members of the SBU who it is claimed attempted to blackmail him, and SBU text messages to middle-level UCU staff to create a climate of fear.
Australian director of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) Phillip Collignon said he had received Fr Gudziak’s memorandum via the organisation’s head office in Germany.
“The memorandum added to our concerns about the situation in the Ukraine,” Mr Collignon said.
“The Catholic community in the Ukraine is foremost in the list of countries around the world that ACN is assisting.”
Under the Soviets the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine was the largest illegal religious body in the world and the most persecuted.
Mr Collignon said the Church had been “liquidated” by Russian dictator Josef Stalin in 1946 when it was forcibly merged with the Russian Orthodox Church.
The legendary Ukrainian Cardinal Josef Slipyi, who spent two decades in the gulags once said that his Church had been buried under “mountains of corpses and rivers of blood”.
In 1939, the Greek Catholics had 2500 priests but by 1989 the number had fallen to 300. Today it’s back to 2500 with 800 seminarians in formation.
Some years back, Fr Pasok was one of these seminarians.
In 1991 “everything was very optimistic”, he said last week.
“Even two years ago when I visited things seemed fine and everyone was full of optimism.
“Now all the reports we are hearing are worrying.
“It feels as though this is the start of something very bad.
“Definitely something dirty is going on.”
Fr Pasok said he would attempt to see his friends and colleagues at the Ukraine Catholic University while he was visiting his parents in Slovakia.
“I will be trying to find out as much as I can,” he said.
“Then I can use this first-hand information to alert the rest of the world about what is happening in Ukraine.”
For further information on Fr Gudziak’s visit to Australia or to find out more about the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Australia visit http://www.catholicukes.org.au/
