Ever since the 1596 Union of Brest reestablished full communion between the Bishop of Rome and several ecclesiastical jurisdictions in eastern Europe, what we know today as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), the principal heir to that act of reconciliation, has suffered greatly for its fidelity to the Successor of Peter.
For centuries, many Polish Catholic leaders bent every effort to “Latinize” the Greek Catholics in terms of liturgy, church discipline, and governance. The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), always an agent of political and cultural imperialism in the Ukrainian lands, never conceded the legitimacy of the Union of Brest. And in 1946, the ROC cooperated with the militantly atheistic Soviet regime to “dissolve” the UGCC legally, in a bogus church council conducted under the baton of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD.
Thus from 1946 until 1990-1991, the UGCC clung to life as a clandestine body, even as many of its bishops, priests, monks, nuns, and laity…
