Lviv-born Lyubomyr Huzar spent almost 50-years outside his homeland before returning after independence; now he is the spiritual leader of over 5 million Greek Catholic believers.
, addressed an open letter to the authorities calling on them to start a political dialog with the opposition.
The intervention reflects Huzar’s conviction that the church should be actively involved in the life of the country while remaining independent of any particular political force.
“The church should not be politically engaged, but that doesn’t imply indifference – that we should not be interested in the situation. Quite the opposite, since the well-being of both the people and the church is dependent on the political situation in their country,” Huzar said.
Following the same precepts, Huzar explicitly forbade his priests from using their position to canvas for candidates ahead of the parliamentary elections last March.
As for his relations with the head of state, Huzar insists that they are good. “I can’t complain,” he said. “The president’s attitude towards us has been favorable in many respects.”
A former U.S. citizen who spent almost five decades outside his homeland, Huzar has described communism as a system for “the spiritual and physical destruction of people,” and considers that it is necessary for Ukraine to officially condemn it.
Long journey home
Born in Polish-ruled Lviv, Huzar left his homeland with his family in 1944, when he was 11 years old. The family eventually settled in the United States. But returning to Ukraine was a lifelong dream.
“When we lived in America, every holiday we asked God to bless us and let us celebrate the holiday next year in Ukraine,” Huzar said.
Huzar studied at a seminary in Stamford, Connecticut, and was ordained in 1958. After obtaining his doctorate in theology in Rome in 1972, he entered an Italian monastery. He was made a bishop in 1977 by Patriarch Josyf Slipyj, the exiled head of the Greek Catholic Church.
The day of the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev by Communist hardliners in August 1991, Huzar was at his Italian monastery waiting to receive a group of children from the Chernobyl zone. By the time Ukraine declared independence a few days later, Huzar was following events in his homeland closely on the radio.
“As soon as a chance to return appeared, I came back right away,” he said.
However, his impressions of Lviv on his first visit in 1991 were dispiriting.
“I got to know the town all over again, although I remembered it from my early childhood. But everything looked so neglected, ugly and dirty. People appeared gloomy and depressed,” he said.
Huzar returned to Ukraine permanently in 1993 and became a citizen last year.
He was elected to head the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine by its Higher Synod of Bishops in January, 2001, and shortly afterwards he was made a cardinal by the pope.
Though much has changed in Ukraine since 1991, the situation is still far from perfect, he said.
“People change, but some of them are still twisted spiritually,” said Huzar.
However, he claims to detect a new mood of optimism, at least among the younger generation. Huzar says that he tries to spend as much of his time with young people as possible.
“Until you reach 40, it is better to communicate with your elders to learn form them. But after 40, you should spend more time with young people in order not to lose joy in life, and what is more important, in order that they do not feel abandoned,” he said.
Greek Catholics return to Kyiv
Huzar is currently occupied with the construction of a Greek Catholic cathedral in Kyiv and the transfer of his residence from Lviv to the capital.
“We’re back 200 years after we were evicted from Kyiv. Now the leaders of all the traditional Ukrainian churches are here as well,” Huzar said.
The status of the Greek Catholic Church, which practices Orthodox rites but recognizes the pope as head of the church, remains controversial. Some commentators view the Brest Union of 1596, which led to its creation, as a betrayal of Orthodoxy. For others, though, it was the only option available to those who wished to preserve Ukrainian traditions and avoid conversion to Catholicism at a time when they were coming under pressure from both proselytizing Poles and the expansionist Moscow state.
For its present believers, though, the Greek Catholic Church is almost synonymous with “national identity,” due to its close association with Ukraine’s struggle for independence from Poland and the Soviet Union in the first half of the 20th century.
Despite the widespread belief that the Greek Catholic Church is confined to Western Ukraine, there are between 5 million and 5.5 million Greek Catholic believers throughout the country and 1 million abroad. Huzar’s activity has, therefore, not been limited to Western regions.
“Recently bishops started work in Kharkiv and Donetsk, and hopefully there will be one in southern Ukraine soon,” he said. “But we are still a long way from covering all of Ukraine.”
Church unification
One of the most hotly debated topics in Ukrainian religious life is the possible unification of the country’s traditional Christian churches – the Kyiv and Moscow Patriarchates of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Though the Orthodox churches do not generally include the Greek Catholics in such plans, Huzar does not rule out an eventual unification of all four churches, but he sees little sign that it will happen in the near future.
“It is possible, no doubt. But it’s hard to say whether it will happen soon. Sometimes mysterious things happen in mankind’s history,” Huzar said.
He says the biggest problem is that each of the churches insists that it has the only correct position.
“We’ve all puffed ourselves up a little and are showing how much we matter,” Huzar said.
“I’ll frankly tell you that we, Greek Catholics, are not completely ready for dialog. But maybe the Lord will somehow let us understand what we need to do. If so, what now appears to be absolutely hopeless will become quite real.”
Huzar links the Greek Catholic church’s continuing success to its desire to be a church and nothing else, which means helping people to live in accordance with God’s will.
“I don’t see that it is the main task of our church to become very rich or influential, or for politicians to reckon with it. That’s unimportant. The most important thing is to be able to help and serve people,” Huzar said.
This profile was published in Russian in Korrespondent magazine on Jan. 21 as part of its series devoted to the 100 most influential individuals in Ukraine.
