Local Ukrainian Catholic whose family members were killed for their faith and country returns to help his homeland’s future priests
By Anthony Barich
PERTH Ukrainian Greek Catholic community leader, Bohdan Mykytiuk considers himself lucky to be alive.
Bohdan’s family was nearly wiped out by the Soviets and Nazis for being Christians and Ukrainian nationalists.
His father was urged by a guard in the Brigitka political prison camp in Ivano Frankivsk to escape; he later returned to find the Soviets had massacred 6,000 inmates.
His mother, also an inmate of the same prison, later narrowly escaped being killed when a stray Allied Forces bomb devastated a children’s hospital in Bayreuth, Germany, along with the women, babies and Methodist nuns who ran it.
His grandmother died fleeing the Ukraine during World War II.
Bohdan and his sister, Marta, decided that their late father’s wishes – to tend their grandmother’s memory – would be better fulfilled if they helped seminarians back in Ukraine rather than paying to upkeep her grave in Austria.
They believed this was more appropriate as there has been a priest in every generation of their family as far back as they could trace, including links to the late Ukranian Greek Catholic Church Patriarch and Cardinal, Josyf Slipyj.
Bohdan has also worked with the current ‘Patriarch’, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, for a number of years.
Bohdan, a retired Edith Cowan University education, migration and settlement lecturer and Catholic school teacher, was born in the safer confines of Northam, but has always felt very much at home in Ukraine.
He is an active member and educator in the Ukrainian-Greek Catholic parish in Maylands and the Ukrainian community in WA.
He has often visited Ukraine and, since 2005, has returned annually to the Holy Spirit Seminary and the nearby Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Western Ukraine, to help the seminarians and students realise that “having faith in doing the right thing” as his ancestors did, “will eventually bear fruit”.
In addition to prayers and theological studies, all seminarians are actively engaged in a range of pastoral activities in schools and hospitals with people with disabilities, orphans, street kids, drug addicts, alcoholics and the sick, aged and infirm.
As chaplains in the armed forces, the seminarians work with police and security services, providing help and spiritual guidance to all those in need.
They also conduct missions throughout Ukraine and Russia (particularly Siberia – a popular place for incarceration of Ukrainian political prisoners since Tsarist times) as well as other countries of the former Soviet Union where Ukrainians live.
“Through their example, their humility and their piety, the seminarians are awakening and encouraging people in Ukraine to follow Jesus in their daily life, particularly caring for one another, building community and helping those less fortunate,” Bohdan said.
“This is a remarkable programme and a testament to the deep faith of the Ukrainian people, considering decades of atheistic and Communist enculturation and the current government’s limited expenditure on social services.”
It’s hardly surprising, however, since the grandparents of many seminarians and students of the Ukrainian Catholic University fought in the Ukrainian Resistance during World War II and together with their parents were active in the underground Ukraine Greek Catholic Church during the 40 -year Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine until the declaration of Ukrainian Independence in 1991.
In terms of finances, the seminary is trying to solve its own problems by striving to become financially independent, particularly in the wake of the steep rise in world food prices and, thereafter, the Global Financial Crisis in 2008.
During vacations, they conduct summer camps for students and pilgrims and, during the year, they cater for weddings and other celebrations in а function centre that they renovated themselves.
“With the seminary having trouble making ends meet financially, naturally one of the things to suffer is educational resources,” he said.
Not long ago, Bohdan and the current ‘Patriarch’ (although the Pope has not officially given him that title, many Ukrainians refer to him as such) Sviatoslav Shevchuk, then Chancellor of the Holy Spirit Seminary in Lviv, set about redressing the imbalance.
Back in WA, Bohdan mobilised Ukrainian Catholics in Northam to raise $5,000 to computerise the seminary library.
In the same year, $10,000 was raised for library shelving with the help of the Ukrainian community in Perth.
In 2008, Bohdan and his friends in Ukraine donated $5,000 to refurbish computer classrooms.
After the blessing of the refurbished facilities, Chancellor, then-Fr Sviatoslav thanked Bohdan and his wife Katryna on behalf of the seminary, awarding them an embossed insignia of the Holy Spirit Seminary.
Staff of the Holy SPirit Seminary wanted to name the computer centre after Bohdan, but he preferred to name it after his uncles – “the Mykytiuk Brothers from the River Prut” in Kolomyia, who were executed by the Soviets during the war for their Christian and nationalist activities
Bohdan is now on the Advisory Board of Lviv Ukrainian Catholic University’s Institute of Leadership and Management.
The Institute has trained over 500 lay young adults to be workers in their parishes, along with seminarians, to spread the Gospel and help those in need.
Together, they mobilise their parishes to become active in projects such as programmes for children from dysfunctional families and helping other parishioners in need.
They also help address a major social crisis evolving in the Ukraine – family breakdown stemming from over 10 million Ukrainians working elsewhere throughout Europe, many of whom leave their spouses and children for years at a time.
During their holidays, seminarians have to report to the priest in their parish who keeps a log of the work they do around the parish and in the community, especially working with lay leadership teams.
“In a post-Communist society where oligarchs have simply changed their colours and not their behaviour, as a thinking, feeling Christian, how could you not support the process of renewal generated by the Ukrainian Catholic University and the Holy Spirit Seminary in Lviv?” Bohdan told The Record.
If you would like to find out more, support Christian renewal in Ukraine or tour some of the unique holy places of special significance in Ukraine, contact Bohdan at mykbr@yahoo.com.