Patriarch Myroslav Lubachivsky of UGCC Honored in Lviv
December 14, 2010, is the 10th anniversary of death of Patriarch Myroslav Lubachivsky of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), who headed the church after Josef Slipyj. The celebratory academy dedicated to the patriarch will be held at 7 p.m. in St. Geroge's Cathedral in Lviv, reported the Institute of Church History of the Ukrainian Catholic University to RISU.
After the death of Patriarch Josef Slipyj on September 7, 1984, Bishop Myroslav Lubachivsky became supreme archbishop of Lviv. On March 31, 1991, after the legalization of the UGCC in Ukraine, he returned to Lviv.
Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky (24 June 1914 - 14 December 2000), Cardinal, was Bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia in the United States and from 1984 Major Archbishop of Lviv and head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).
He was ordained a priest of the Archeparchy of Lviv in 1938 by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and then continued his doctoral studies in theology in Austria. After World War II, he was unable to return to Ukraine and emigrated to the United States, where he continued his pastoral work, first as a priest at St. Peter and Paul Church in Cleveland, Ohio, beginning in 1949, and then from 1968 as a teacher at the St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Seminary in Washington. He also taught at St. Basil's College in Philadelphia and St. Basil's Academy in Stamford, Connecticut, before being ordained archbishop of Philadelphia in 1979.
Pope John Paul II appointed Lubachivsky coadjutor to Cardinal Josyf Slipyj in 1979. Upon Cardinal Slipyj's death in 1984, he took over as head of the UGCC. In 1985, Pope John Paul II gave him the title of Cardinal Priest of S. Sofia a Via Boccea.
Soviet authorities lifted the ban against the church in 1989, and Lubachivsky along with other leaders of the UGCC officially returned to Lviv from exile on March 30, 1991.
Lubachivsky is buried in St. George's Cathedral in Lviv.
