A 40-year-old bishop serving in Argentina has been elected to lead
the Ukrainian Catholic Church: the largest Eastern Church in communion
with the Holy See.
Bishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the apostolic administrator of the Eparchy
of the Protection of the Blessed Mary in Buenos Aires, was elected by
the 40 bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Synod on March 23.
The results
of the election were not announced to the public until Pope Benedict XVI
confirmed the choice on March 25.
The new Major Archbishop will be
enthroned in Kyiv on March 27.
The Ukrainian prelate succeeds Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, who retired in
February, citing his failing health, after 10 years as the head of the
Ukrainian Catholic Church. (Cardinal Husar, who is 78, is losing his
eyesight.)
During his tenure Cardinal Husar had moved the headquarters
of the Ukrainian Church from Lviv to Kyiv.
Born in 1970, Bishop Shevchuk was ordained as a priest in Lviv in 1994.
After graduate studies in theology he taught at the Lviv seminary, and
served as personal secretary to Cardinal Husar.
In 2009 he became an
auxiliary bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic eparchy in Argentina, and was
appointed as apostolic administrator when the previous bishop retired.
The election of Bishop Shevchuk broke a temporary deadlock in the Synod
voting.
Following the rules for such elections, after 12 inconclusive
ballots the bishops narrowed their selections to the two prelates who
had been named most frequently in the last round of voting.
Shortly
thereafter, the winning candidate received the necessary two-thirds
majority.
One of the youngest Catholic bishops in the world, the new Major
Archbishop becomes an enormously influential figure in Ukraine and on
the ecumenical scene.
The Ukrainian Catholic Church, with over 4 million
faithful, is by far the largest of the Byzantine-rite Catholic
churches. After decades of brutal suppression under the Soviet regime,
the Ukrainian Catholic Church emerged with remarkable vigor after the
fall of Communism.
Ukrainian Catholics have pressed the Vatican for
recognition of a Ukrainian patriarchate.
But the Russian Orthodox
Church, which claims Ukraine as its own “canonical territory,” has
adamantly opposed that idea, and views the activities of the Ukrainian
Catholic Church as an impediment to ecumenical progress.