Lyubomyr Huzar, the former supreme archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, died on May 31 after a long illness. He was 84.
Crux, an independent Catholic news organization, said it expects thousands of followers to attend Huzar’s funeral, which has been scheduled for June 5 in Kyiv. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church office told the Kyiv Post that there will also be remembrance services in the city this Sunday.
Huzar left four nephews, the children of his sister Martha. Three of the nephews will attend the funeral. Martha died in 2001, according to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church office.
Huzar served as supreme archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from 2001 to 2011. Usually, an archbishop serves for life, but Huzar stepped down to make way for Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the current supreme archbishop.
In 2013, two years after Huzar stepped down as head of the church, which has 5.5 million Ukrainian followers, the Kyiv Post wrote that Huzar, then 80 years old, was looking frail, his hearing was poor, and his eyesight was fading.
News of Huzar’s death brought tributes from friends and colleagues.
Borys Gudziak, eparch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Eparchy of Paris, who had known Huzar for more than 50 years according to Crux, wrote on Facebook that “Archbishop Lyubomyr was an extremely gifted person — in an intellectual and emotional way, with incredible imagination, a beautiful velvety baritone, and a great preaching style.”
“He united Ukrainians, becoming their spiritual father and the highest example of morality,” Gudziak wrote.
Myroslav Marynovych, the vice rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, in an article published on June 1, called Huzar a “person of freedom” and a “person of truth.”
Huzar was born in Lviv on Feb. 26, 1933, and fled to Austria at age 11 after the reoccupation of Lviv by Soviet forces. His family emigrated to the United States in 1949, where he studied and later taught at St. Basil’s College Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut. Prior to his work at St. Basil’s College, he studied at the Catholic University of America in Washington D. C., and at Fordham University in New York.
In 1969, he went to Rome, where he gained a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Urbanian University. Later, he was elected as a superior of the Ukrainian Studite monastic community at the Studion Monastery, near Castel Gandolfo, Italy. Huzar returned to Lviv after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and became the spiritual director of the newly re-established Holy Spirit Seminary.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a Byzantine Rite Eastern Catholic Church that is a successor church to the acceptance of Christianity by Grand Prince Vladimir the Great of Kyiv, in 988, is present throughout and in many other nations, particularly those with a large Ukrainian diaspora such as the United States and Canada. In Ukraine, the largest number of parishioners live in the country’s western regions.
During an interview with the Kyiv Post, on the eve of the 22nd anniversary of Ukrainian independence Huzar said: “It was not through our specific achievements, through something that we did, but I would call it a gift from God that Ukraine became an independent state — independent of those occupations that we suffered during the 19th and 20th century.”
With regard to Russia’s war against Ukraine, Gudziak wrote that Huzar “…dreamed of the end of this war, and of reconciliation with the Russians.”
Gudziak said near the end of his post that “right now it’s very important for us to escort the Most Blessed Lyubomyr with prayer in this unearthly moment of his transition.”
Funeral services for Lyubomyr Huzar
Remembrance services have been set for Lyubomyr Huzar, the former supreme archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who died on May 31 at the age of 84. The services will be in the Monastery of the Holy Family, 5 Mykilso-Slobidska St., in Kyiv. Three services will take place on June 4 at 7:30 a. m., 9 a. m., and 11 a. m. The funeral is at 11 a. m. on June 5.
