Many Catholics are unaware of the various Eastern rite communities within the Church.
Pope Francis would not be one of them.
Bishop Gerald N. Dino of the Byzantine Holy Protection Eparchy of
Phoenix said the election of Pope Francis bodes well for Eastern rite
Catholics.
“He’s very familiar with the Byzantine rite,” Bishop Dino said. “It
means that we have a leader who understands a minority group within the
Church and respects those minorities.”
As a teenagaer growing up in Argentina, Jorge Bergoglio, the future
pontiff, attended a high school run by the Salesian Fathers. It was
there that he came under the influence of a Ukrainian Catholic priest,
Fr. Stefan Czmil.
Fr. Andriy Chirovsky, pastor of St. Michael Ukrainian Catholic Church
in Tucson, said that Pope Francis would rise early each morning, hours
before his classmates, to serve at the Divine Liturgy — the Mass —
celebrated by Fr. Czmil.
“He developed a great love of and understanding of Eastern Christian
spirituality and liturgy,” Fr. Chirovsky said. Fr. Czmil spent 12 years
in Argentina before returning to Italy.
That’s where Fr. Chirovsky, the Tucson pastor, studied and where he
too came under the influence of Fr. Czmil, whose cause is now up for
beatification.
“I was a seminarian there and Fr. Czmil was one of my spiritual
directors and my confessor,” Fr. Chirovsky said. “The pope and I share
the same mentor. We were both influenced by this good, gentle, holy
priest.”
As Archbishop of Argentina, Pope Francis was the ordinary for all
Eastern rite Catholics. At the Mass of his enthronement in March, it did
not go unnoticed that the Gospel was proclaimed in Greek, rather than
Latin.
And at the tomb of St. Peter, just prior to the inaugural Mass,
Pope Francis invited a small group to join him in prayer. Among them
were Iraq’s Chaldean Patriarch, Louis Sako, as well as the leaders of
other Eastern Churches.
The Catholic Church has not canonized many Eastern rite Catholics
through the years. Now, with a pontiff deeply influenced by the
Byzantine and Ukrainian liturgies and spirituality, many think that
could change.
“I have great hopes for Fr. Czmil’s canonization,” Fr. Chirovsky said. “If anybody knows his holiness, it will be Pope Francis.”
Bishop Dino acknowledged that the cost of advancing a cause for beatification and canonization can be an obstacle.
“The cost of trying to advance a person to canonization is so great
and our churches are not that wealthy,” Bishop Dino said. “We don’t have
that many wealthy people, so it’s difficult.”
Still, he and others hold out hope that some of those martyred for
the faith will receive recognition from the universal Church.
Many
Catholics do not realize that the Eastern rite Churches suffered
horrific persecution by the Soviet communists—a persecution, he added,
that is recent and largely unknown.
“All of our bishops were killed except for our patriarch who
basically stayed alive by divine providence and because he was the most
stubborn man who ever lived,” Fr. Chirovsky said.
You’d have to be a
strong-willed person, Fr. Chirovsky said, to endure 19 years in Soviet
Siberian concentration camps.
The Soviets systematically persecuted the Ukrainian Catholics and outlawed their Church for decades.
“If you were identified as Ukrainian Catholic you were either
arrested and sent to prison or sent to concentration camp to punish you
for counter-revolutionary activity,” Fr. Chirovsky said. “Or they would
send you to a psychiatric hospital because you claimed to belong to a
Church that didn’t exist.”
The Ukrainian Catholic Church of Tucson prays for the victims of the
continuing persecution of Christians in the Middle East, Fr. Chirovsky
said.
Pope Francis was elected March 13, the five-year anniversary of
the discovery of the body of Archbishop Paulos Rahho, kidnapped and
killed by jihadists in Mosul in 2008.
There’s generally a five-year
waiting period before the cause for beatification can be opened.
Could
the timing of the Pope’s election be a divine signal that canonization
for the many Chaldean Catholic martyrs — at least 1,000 since 2003 — is
in order?
Msgr. Felix Shabi, corbishop of the Chaldean Catholic Vicariate of
Arizona, said the synod of Chaldean bishops meeting in Baghdad this
June, might discuss it. In the meantime, he said, Chaldeans are just
trying to survive amidst a withering persecution.
“The martyrs are already with Jesus but we still have people who are dying every day in Baghdad and Mosul,” Msgr. Shabi said.