Archbishop Borys Gudziak, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic leader in the U.S. and president of the Ukrainian Catholic University, joined the ranks of Mother Theresa and Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in receiving the humanitarian Notre Dame Award during a ceremony on June 29 at the university campus in Lviv.
“It is my pleasure to recognize Archbishop Borys Gudziak for his visionary leadership in higher education, for his pastoral care for the Ukrainian Catholics around the world and for his witness of the gospel,” said Reverend John I. Jenkins, president of the U.S.-based University of Notre Dame that presents the award.
Gudziak previously served as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic leader in France, Benelux and Switzerland. He was enthroned as Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archeparchy (Archdiocese) of Philadelphia on June 4, becoming the church’s spiritual leader in the United States.
“This gesture is a testament to awareness by a prestigious American university about you and me in Ukraine. About our situation, about the issues of war, poverty and migration,” Gudziak told the media after the award ceremony.
“It’s a great honor for me and for the university, for our whole church and country. And this joy is a sign of closeness and communion,” he said after receiving the award in the name of his spiritual teachers, university senators, faculty and students.
The Notre Dame award is presented to “men and women whose life and deeds have shown exemplary dedication to the ideals for which the (Notre Dame) University stands: faith, inquiry, education, justice, public service, peace and care for the most vulnerable.”
A team of Notre Dame staff chooses candidates for the award, looking for distinguished people who embody the values of the university. Reverend Jenkins as president of the university ultimately decides on the winner.
Other recipients of the Notre Dame Award include Archbishop of Sarajevo Vinko Puljić, the architect of the Northern Ireland peace process John Hume, South African anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman and Brazilian anti-corruption judge Sérgio Moro.
Gudziak is the first person of Ukrainian descent and first higher education leader to receive the award.
Gudziak transformed the Lviv Theological Academy into the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in 2002. It is the first Catholic university to open in the former Soviet Union. It is also a successor to the Ukrainian Catholic University in Rome founded in 1963 and the Greek Catholic Theological Academy created in 1928-1929.
Gudziak built UCU on the “twin pillars of the martyrs and marginalized” – those who suffered for their beliefs under Soviet totalitarian rule and neglected intellectually disabled people. Gudziak considers both groups essential to providing a value–based higher education and rebuilding trust in Ukrainian society.
Gudziak had created the Emmaus Center at the university campus. Here, people with developmental disabilities and their families receive support and share their lives with students.
Founder of the Ukrainian Catholic University Borys Gudziak hugs a resident of the Emmaus Center, where people with developmental disabilities live within the university, on June 29, 2019 in Lviv. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
“You put at the heart of UCU the Emmaus Center – a community of friends with special needs whose spontaneous genuineness invites us to put away masks and live authentically. Their disarming openness is the antidote to the mistrust and the fear brought by this nation’s recent history of war, genocidal famine, purges and exterminations,” Jenkins told Gudziak when presenting the award.
At the ceremony, Jenkins and Gudziak also signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Notre Dame and UCU, committing them to further academic cooperation.
Gudziak is scheduled to meet Pope Francis next week. He said he will ask the head of the Catholic Church to issue a challenge to the global community of Catholic universities to “go where there are no Catholic universities and offer the wonderful education” to those who need it.
“I want to bring the message of this martyr (Ukrainian Greek Catholic) Church and of the marginalized that are placed at the center,” said Gudziak. “And I want to say ‘You know what? I’m not speaking – it’s the University of Notre Dame. They said it’s pretty good.'”
