Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky

Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky, C.SS.R. (1884 –1959)

June 2001

Bishop Charnetsky

The community rejoiced on 25 April at the news that Bishop Charnetsky and 25 of his
martyr-companions of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church are to be raised to the honours of the altar during the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ukraine in June. Catholic will report any new developments in this regard as they happen.

The grave of Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky

“The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep.”
[Jn 10,11] The grave of the Servant of God,
Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky, C.SS.R. in Lviv, Ukraine is visited by countless pilgrims, including the Sisters of St Basil the Great who collaborate in our mission to Ukrainian Greek Catholics from the house where the great Redemptorist pastor of souls spent the last years of his life, and which we have dedicated to his memory.

July 2001

Nicholas Charnetsky was born on December 14, 1884 in the village of Semakivtsi in Ukrainian Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, of deeply religious parents of the Greek Catholic rite. Having entered the diocesan seminary of Stanislaviv straight after school, he was ordained a priest on October 2, 1909 by (future martyr) Bishop Gregory Khomyshyn, who is also to be beatified. His higher theological studies were completed in Rome, where he obtained his doctorate in theology. On his return, Fr Charnetsky was apponted spiritual director and professor of dogmatic theology at the Major Seminary in Stanislaviv. Soon, however, he was to follow the call to the religious life, and in 1919 he entered the newly-established novitiate of the Redemptorist Fathers in Zboiska near Lviv.

On September 16, 1920 he made his first profession of vows. After a brief stay in Stanislav doing apostolic work, he was assigned as a professor at the Redemptorist Minor Seminary. In 1926 he joined the mission of the Fathers in Volynia, a region where Catholicism had been brutally eradicated when it was under the sceptre of the Czars of Moscow. His zeal and charity won many Orthodox dissidents back to the True Fold.

Pope Pius XI appointed him Apostolic Visitator for the Greek Catholics in Poland outside of Galicia, and he was consecrated a bishop by Blessed Gregory Khomyshyn on February 2, 1931 in the Redemptorist church of St Alphonsus in Rome. His work took him throughout Eastern Europe and as far afield as England. During the first Soviet occupation of Galicia (1939-1941) Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky extended his jurisdiction to that of an exarch in order that he might gain souls wherever the fluctuating wartime borders permitted his apostolic work.

After the definitive Soviet occupation of Galicia, Bishop Charnetsky along with the entire Ukrainian Catholic episcopate, was arrested by the Secret Police on April 11, 1945. Sentenced to six years of labor camps in Siberia, he was assigned to a blacksmith shop, where after two years of hard labour his health was completely ruined. While in prison he continued to minister to the people in whatever way was possible, especially by hearing confessions and helping them to remain faithful to the Apostolic See. Though sentenced to six years in the GULAG, Bishop Charnetsky was able to return to Lviv only after eleven years, when his health was already completed ruined. There he lived under strict surveillance in a house which now belongs to our community. On April 2, 1959 he ended his earthly life. His grave in a public cemetery in Lviv has become a place of pilgrimage where his wonder-working intercession is sought.