How does it happen that a child growing up in eastern Galicia among Ukrainians, Poles, Moldovans, Germans, Austrians, Jews, Roma, and Armenians dodges Nazi death squads and the Red Army, learns first-hand what it means to be a “displaced person” in occupied Austria, emigrates to the United States, completes university and seminary studies before being ordained a priest, writes a pioneering doctoral dissertation on ecumenism, joins a monastic order, is clandestinely ordained a bishop, has his episcopal ordination recognized by St. John Paul II, is created a cardinal by the same pope — and at an age when many men begin to contemplate retirement, returns to his newly self-liberated homeland for the first time in a half-century and over the next two decades becomes the most widely respected and deeply beloved figure in the country?
OP-ED
George Weigel: The remarkable life of Lubomyr Husar
(Archive photo) The leader of Ukraine's Graeco-Catholic Church, Cardinal Lyubomir Husar blesses believers during a service marking the official move of Ukraine's Graeco-Catholic church to the capital Kyiv, August 21, 2005.
