The UGCC is working on a number of beatifications and canonizations, collecting information and documenting the lives of those whom the church wants to recognize as saints
Basilian Hieromonk Polikarp (Martseliuk), head of the postulation center draws attention to the example of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky.
“He suffered for his desire for Christian unity, always lived in danger, Russians arrested him on charges of ‘Mazepynstvo’ [derogatory term for the Ukrainians’ liberation movement in the Russian Empire], the Polish government isolated him during the war in the wards of St. George’s Cathedral, and among Ukrainians were those who accused him of sympathizing with Orthodoxy. When Metropolitan Andrey was in exile in Russia, he was taken in by a Russian bishop and later in Lviv the metropolitan took him in when he became a fugitive. Metropolitan Andrey defended the Ukrainians’ right to their own state, but also called for cooperation between nations in the newly created Second Polish Republic. Metropolitan Andrey was a peacekeeper, who in time of war was a model of how to remain human under any circumstances. The metropolitan’s pupils continued his work, as martyrs they were killed for their faith in exile. Many priests who were his pupils did not flee abroad, did not leave their flocks.”
Father Polikarp gave examples of priests who followed the guidance of their metropolitan, in particular, Father Josef Ostashevsky, who in the village Pidberiztsi near Lviv at the time of the German occupation looked after patients with typhoid fever. His name is on the list of Servants of God that will be reviewed in Rome as candidates of martyrs.
Immediately after John Paul II’s visit to Ukraine, the Postulation Mission continued the processes of new martyrs of the UGCC – some were not ready in time for the visit of Pope John Paul II, and other names emerged later. All in all, there are 45 names on the list, with the pastor of Stebnyk, Father Petro Mekelyta, at the top. Most of them are priests who were killed by the Communist regime in World War II. But the list also includes a lay woman, 27-year-old Mariya Shveda who was brutally murdered in the 1980s. And the youngest “member” of the beatification process is a 25-year-old Redemptorist monk Marian Halan. While in the Soviet army, he was accused of spreading religious propaganda.
