CAPUCHINS IN UKRAINE
The first monastery of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in Ukraine was founded in Lviv in 1709. By the end of the eighteenth century, 16 monasteries belonging to the Polish Capuchin Province had been established in what is now Ukraine. This province was divided into two custodies: Polish and Ruthenian (Volhynian). All the religious houses on Ukrainian lands belonged to the Ruthenian Custody. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Poland) was partitioned among three states, which also led to the division of the Polish Province into several administrative units. In 1796, a Ruthenian Province was established on the Ukrainian lands annexed by russia. It ceased to exist within the Order in 1808 as a result of repression and the suppression of monasteries by the tsarist authorities. The monasteries on Ukrainian lands under Austrian rule were incorporated into the Galician Province, established in 1785. After the Second World War, Western Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union, and the Soviet authorities closed all the monasteries on its territory. Some friars were convicted and exiled to Siberia.
The Servant of God Serafin Kaszuba remained in the Soviet Union and continued his pastoral ministry in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and russia until his death in 1977.
The Capuchins returned to Ukraine in 1988. The first to arrive was Br Stanisław Padewski. Initially, the friars helped priests with parish work and later established their own centres: in 1989, the Capuchins returned to their former monastery in Starokostiantyniv; the following year, they opened a centre in Krasyliv; in 1992, they returned to Vinnytsia; and since 1993, they have been serving in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
On 5 January 1995, Br Ryszard Modelski, Provincial Minister of the Kraków Province, asked the General Curia to establish a custody for the friars working in Ukraine. The corresponding decree of 13 June 1995 took legal effect on 5 July 1995, and Br Błażej Suska was appointed the first custos.
At the time the Custody was established, nine friars were working in Ukraine, while several friars from Ukraine were undergoing initial formation in Poland. The Capuchins then had four centres: Starokostiantyniv, Krasyliv, Vinnytsia and Kyiv. The following years brought further growth in the Custody’s territory and membership. In 1999, new religious houses opened in eastern Ukraine, in Dnipropetrovsk and Dniprodzerzhynsk.
The growth of the Order in these territories led to the elevation of the Custody of Friars Minor Capuchin to the Vice-Province of Ukraine and russia on 14 June 2004, under the Kraków Province. Today, the Capuchin friars work in three dioceses in Ukraine — Kyiv-Zhytomyr, Kamianets-Podilskyi and Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhia — as well as in the Diocese of Saratov in russia. Within these dioceses are seven monasteries: in Vinnytsia, Dniprodzerzhynsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Krasyliv, Starokostiantyniv and Voronezh (russia), where 28 Capuchin friars live and work.
HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF FRIARS MINOR CAPUCHIN
In the early decades of the sixteenth century, three Italian Observant Franciscans — members of one of the earliest branches of the Order of St Francis — united in their desire to live their vocation through closer observance of the Rule of St Francis and greater devotion to prayer. They were Matteo da Bascio and the brothers Ludovico and Raffaele Tenaglia of Fossombrone. Their original intention was not to found a new religious order, but simply to follow St Francis and his first companions more closely, taking them as models for their own lives. In 1528, with the help of Caterina Cybo, Duchess of Camerino and a relative of Pope Clement VII, who had been deeply impressed by the first Capuchins’ heroic service to the sick during the plague of 1525, they received papal permission to live as they wished. Among other things, Pope Clement VII allowed the friars to wear a habit with a pointed hood and to grow beards as a sign of poverty, simplicity and austerity. It was this pointed hood that gave the Order, initially called the “Friars Minor of the Eremitical Life”, its popular and subsequently official name: Friars Minor Capuchin.
To this day, Capuchins are distinguished from other Friars Minor by their appearance: a habit with a pointed hood and the beard many of them wear. Matteo da Bascio, Ludovico and Raffaele Tenaglia were not the only Franciscans of their time who saw a need to reform the Order. Soon after the Capuchins received official approval through the papal bull Religionis zelus on 3 July 1528, many other Observant Franciscans joined the reformers. Among them were outstanding figures such as Giovanni da Fano, Bernardino d’Asti and Bernardino Ochino, who became pillars of the new Franciscan reform. Their entry into the Order helped its ministry develop. Whereas the first Capuchins had devoted themselves primarily to manual work, these friars emphasised the urgent need for preaching and teaching without diminishing the spirit of prayer and austerity. These two forms of work — manual and apostolic — continue to coexist in the Order. The Capuchin reform spread rapidly: within just 50 years, the Order had more than 3,500 friars. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were its golden age. Around 1761, Capuchin numbers reached a peak of 34,000 friars throughout Europe, the Americas, India and North Africa. According to statistics from early 2002, there were almost 11,000 Capuchin friars living in 96 countries. The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin ranks fourth among male religious orders in the Catholic Church by membership. Today, Capuchin ministry is very diverse and depends on the circumstances in which the friars live. They include professors and tailors, spiritual directors and cooks, preachers, chaplains, superiors, medical professionals and others. For Capuchins, however, what they do matters less than how they do it. As the name “Friars Minor” suggests, they wish to be brothers and servants to those they serve. Their simplicity, openness, approachability, willingness to go wherever they are needed, and their way of living and working have earned them the name “brothers of the people”.
Capuchins in Ukraine Today
During the decades of atheist rule in Soviet Ukraine, it seemed that Christianity would disappear from these lands forever, and the return of Catholic religious such as the Capuchins was almost unimaginable. Yet a miracle occurred: in 1988, at the very beginning of the religious thaw, the first Capuchin, Stanisław Padewski, arrived in Ukraine and began restoring the Capuchin presence. The return of the first Capuchins to Ukraine. The revival of the Capuchin presence in Ukraine would be linked to the Kraków Province of Friars Minor Capuchin. After the war, it included friars who still remembered when monasteries in eastern Galicia and Ostroh had belonged to the province. Many had been born on what is now Ukrainian territory, and many had worked before and during the war in Lviv-Zamarstyniv, Drohobych, Olesko and Ostroh. The older friars’ accounts of religious life in Ukraine never ceased to amaze their younger brothers. Among them were Hilary Wilk, the parish priest of Bar, whom the Soviet authorities deported to Poland in 1959; Remigiusz Kranc, the parish priest of Ostroh, who had been exiled to Siberia; and Albin Janocha, who arrived in Lviv after returning from studies in Rome and was exiled from there to Siberia. The friars also heard of Serafin Kaszuba’s underground apostolate in the Soviet Union. When he came to Poland for medical treatment in 1969, they had the opportunity to hear him speak personally about the religious situation in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In the late 1980s, a religious thaw began in the Soviet Union. The Catholic Church in Ukraine had only a few officially registered parishes and a small number of priests, either from Lithuania or local men who had studied in Riga, officially or clandestinely. When it became possible to help the local clergy, Fr Stanisław Padewski came to Ukraine in 1988. He became an itinerant priest, assisting with pastoral care in different parts of central Ukraine. Polonne, Bar, Horodok, Dunaivtsi, Shepetivka and Starokostiantyniv are only some of the places where he served. A year later, in 1989, he was joined by Fr Hilary Wilk, the former parish priest of Bar in the Vinnytsia region. Returning to pastoral work in a country that had once exiled him to Siberia for his religious activities, and subsequently sentenced and deported him, was a truly heroic act. He was a great shepherd, ready to lay down his life for his sheep. On returning to Ukraine, Fr Hilary also lived as an itinerant apostle. The first Capuchin vocations from Ukraine. As soon as the Capuchins arrived in Starokostiantyniv, candidates approached them. Since it was not yet possible to send them to study in Poland, they were secretly admitted to the novitiate and sent to the seminary in Grodno. In 1991, study in Kraków became possible, and the first five candidates went to the centre of the Kraków Capuchin Province. Their first academic year was transitional, as the young friars repeated their novitiate alongside their studies. After their first year at the seminary and the summer holidays at the novitiate house in Sędziszów Małopolski, they made their first vows. They were followed at the Sędziszów novitiate by three more young candidates from Ukraine who had applied to join the Capuchins in 1992. Thereafter, new friars entered the novitiate in Sędziszów almost every year. The growing number of candidates led to the establishment of a one-year postulancy in Starokostiantyniv. A major milestone was the first perpetual profession of friars from Ukraine: Leonid Mykhalets and Yaroslav Fedirchuk made their vows in Krasyliv on 13 June 1997. A year later, on 18 April 1998, Krasyliv hosted another celebration: the priestly ordination of the first Ukrainian Capuchin, Leonid Mykhalets, a native of Starokostiantyniv. At the same ceremony, Br Yaroslav Fedirchuk from Khmelnytskyi was ordained a deacon. Six months later, on 21 November 1998, he became the second Capuchin priest from Ukraine. After completing their studies, Br Kostiantyn Morozov from Khmelnytskyi and Br Viktor Sviderskyi from Zhytomyr were also ordained priests, in 2000 and 2001 respectively. The first Capuchin bishop in Ukraine. In 1991, the official structures of the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine were restored. Pope John Paul II established the dioceses of Lviv, Zhytomyr and Kamianets-Podilskyi and appointed their bishops. On Holy Thursday 1995, Pope John Paul II appointed Fr Stanisław Padewski, the Capuchin superior in Vinnytsia, Auxiliary Bishop of Kamianets-Podilskyi. His episcopal ordination took place in Kamianets-Podilskyi on 10 June 1995. This was a major event for the Capuchins of the Kraków Province, especially the friars working in Ukraine. Pope John Paul II later appointed him Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Lviv. Following the reorganisation of Church structures and the creation of new dioceses in 2002, Stanisław Padewski was appointed the first diocesan bishop of the newly established Diocese of Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhia. The establishment of the Custody of St Anthony. The foundation of three monasteries with flourishing pastoral activities and the growth of local Capuchin vocations prepared the way for the establishment of a custody, one of the Order’s initial administrative units.
On 5 July 1995, shortly after Bishop Stanisław Padewski’s episcopal ordination, Br John Corriveau, Minister General of the Capuchin Order, promulgated the decree establishing the Ukrainian Capuchin Custody under the patronage of St Anthony. It included the friars then working in Ukraine and, by law, friars originally from Ukraine. Br Błażej Suska became its first regular superior, or custos, with Br Justyn Rusin and Br Adrian Góral as his councillors. The creation of the Custody encouraged further growth of the Capuchin presence in Ukraine. New friars arrived from the Kraków Province, the monastery communities were strengthened, and a regular postulancy was established for candidates.
Source: kapucyni.org.ua.