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1956-1989
The Church in the underground
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The change in political situation connected with the death of Stalin in March 1953 and "Chrushchow thaw" generated new hopes and opened new stage of the Christ Way of the UGCC _ underground period.
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Interview with Bishop Paul (Vasylyk), February 18 and 22, 1994, Kolomyia-Lviv.//AICH, è-1-1-455:
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“ To encounter such problems and circumstances in which our Church found itself, it was important to have people already trained. Here I have in mind priests, who would be able to withstand the strong impact and opposition of Bolshevik atheism and Bolshevik violence against the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. It was necessary that the priests also truly have a good arch-pastor, who was the Servant of God Metropolitan Sheptytsky; in Ivano Frankivsk – Hryhorii Khomyshyn and Liatyshevskyi; in Przemysl– Bishops Kotsylovskyi and Hryhorii Lakota. I knew Lakota well, because that was where I studied, but these were people who fulfilled all the necessary criteria of such an approach in arch-pastoral ministry, which all these bishops had. This was all foreseen by God, in order to prepare the people, mainly the priests. ... ” |
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The main protagonists of this period of the life of the Church were bishops, priests, monks, nuns, and faithful, who returned at home from camps and exile. Enduring prodigious physical and moral tortures, they encountered just different western Ukraine that was rendered lifeless, intimidated by the terror, stupefied by the communist and atheistic ideology, but contrarily all still living and waiting for Salvation. These people, which were able to preserve in their hearts the Christian belief and loyalty for their own Church, become small islands, near which the structure of the Church began gradually restore, in spite of all the difficulties and obstacles, artificially created by the soviet power.
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Stalinist Repression. Religious along with believers sent into exile | contents | Bishops and religious in the underground |  |