154 Holland Park Avenue,
London WII 4UH
Jan. 1976
The Editor,
Letters to the Editor’,
The Daily Telegraph,
135 Fleet Street London EC4.
Dear Sir,
We are writing to you in connection with the article recently published in your excellent newspaper – the so-called ’explanation’ of Bishop Augustine Hornyak (Daily Telegraph, Guy Rais, Jan. 12., 1976), on the recent wave of disturbances in the Ukrainian Catholic cathedral in Duke Street, Mayfair, Unfortunately the report contained a number of misrepresentations and false statements, all of which clearly call for an answer.
First, the alleged ‘troublemakers’ who led the carol singing in the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral on Sunday the 11th of January 1976, were not hooligans, but the democratically elected representatives and leaders of the London Branch of the Committee for a Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchate, which in turn is affiliated to the Ukrainian Patriarchal World Federation (UPWF) with national councils in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, etc. The UPWF has many thousands of branches in towns and cities throughout the Western world. In this country alone there are 41 such local branches representing a conservatively estimated 95% of the Ukrainian Catholic Faithful in Britain; an actual figure of between 20,000 and 30,000 people. By comparison you may judge Bishop Hornyak’s popularity in this and other recent disputes, by the fact that the initiating group supporting his actions has amassed the mammoth total of 21 signatures condoning his position in this distasteful affair.
The claim made by Bishop Hornyk that Cardinal Slipyj has repeatedly asked the Vatican to name him as Patriarch, is a slanderous insult to a Confessor of the Faith who has spent 18 years in Russian prisons and concentration camps, as well as being an affront to the countless martyrs of the Silent Church of the modern catacombs in Ukraine, who have repeatedly suffered for their loyalty to their Church and to the Holy See.
His Beatitude Patriarch Joseph I has never asked the Pope to name him as Patriarch of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. What he has asked the Pope to do, is to recognize the right of our Church to a Patriarchate. Joseph Slipyj was acclaimed as Patriarch by his Bishops, clergy, and faithful. Unfortunately Bishop Hornyak, who comes from Yugoslavia, was not one of them.
May we remind you in the interests of unbiased reporting, that Patriarch Joseph I, whilst still imprisoned in the Russian Empire, twice rejected the offer of the Russian Patriarchate on condition that he renounce the Ukrainian Catholic Faith, his fidelity to the Sea of Peter, and adopt the Russian Orthodox rite.
The refusal by the present Pope to grant our Church full autonomy, as guaranteed by the Union of Brest (1596) and reaffirmed by the Decree of Eastern Churches at the Second Vatican Council in 1964, is an entirely political decision, and has been forced by those members of the Roman Curia who, for the sake of better relations with Moscow, are willing to sacrifice the Ukrainian Catholic Church on the altar of political expedience.
The Ukrainian Catholic Church was officially liquidated in the modern Russian Empire in 1946, when all the Bishops, clergy and thousands of laymen were arrested and deported from Ukraine to die as martyrs in the Siberian wastes.
In view of the Ukrainian Catholics past displays of loyalty to the Holy See, it is pitiful to note that when Pimen, the Russian army officer turned Patriarch, said on his enthronement in 1970 – in the presence of Cardinal Willebrands – that the Ukrainian Catholic Church «no longer existed», this remark was met with total equanimity and without a word of protest from the said Cardinal. Neither did the Holy See at a later time ever refute this statement.
We, at the London Branch of the Ukrainian Patriarchal World Federation, believe that the salvation of our Church and its future open existence in Ukraine, lies in the creation of a Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchate. Therefore we clearly feel that we are duty bound to speak in defense of our Church.
By summoning police officers to the Catholic Cathedral on Christmas and on Sunday the 11th of January 1976, Bishop Hornyak inflicted on our people in Britain a wound beyond repair. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainian Catholics in this country are deeply shocked by this totally unprecedented action towards our community here in London, and regard this as a betrayal by the person they believed, mistakenly, to be their spiritual leader.
It is our honest opinion that Bishop Hornyak should resign and make way for a new man, a real people’s Bishop and not a mediaeval dignitary with mediaeval ideas of running a church on the lines of pray, pay and obey.
For and on behalf of the Committee for a Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchate
M. Sheptyckyj, Chairman
Buciak, Secretary
