Andrey Sheptytsky

Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (1901–1944)

Andrey Sheptytsky, OSBM ( Andrzej Szeptycki; Митрополит Андрей Шептицький; 29 July 1865 – 1 November 1944) was the Greek Catholic Archbishop of Lviv and Metropolitan of Halych from 1901 until his death in 1944. His tenure in office spanned two world wars and seven political regimes: Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Soviet, Nazi German, and again Soviet. According to the church historian Jaroslav Pelikan, "Arguably, Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky was the most influential figure  in the entire history of the Ukrainian Church in the twentieth century". The Lviv National Museum, founded by Sheptytsky in 1905, now bears his name. The Information Resource Center of the Ukrainian Catholic University that was opened in September 2017 also bears his name The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Center.

He was born as Count Roman Aleksander Maria Szeptycki in a village 40 km west/northwest of Lviv called Prylbychi, in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then a crownland of the Austrian Empire. His parents were and Zofia née Fredro.

Sheptytsky became a novice at the Basilian monastery in Dobromyl on June 2, 1888. He took the name, Andrew, after the younger brother of Saint Peter, Andrew the Apostle, considered the founder of the Byzantine Church and also specifically of the Ukrainian Church. Beginning in 1889, he studied Ukrainian there under (now Ivano Frankivsk), and Pope Leo XIII concurred. Thus he was consecrated as bishop in Lviv on 17 September 1899 by Metropolitan Julian Sas Kuilovsky assisted by Bishop Chekhovych and Bishop Weber, the Latin Rite auxiliary of Lviv. On February 5 of that year, he received a doctorate in theological sciences in Rome, nostrified at the Faculty of Theology of the Jagiellonian University. During the destruction the family archives were lost. According to his close friend Rabbi David Kahane, however, Sheptytsky had believed that the Division would be used to fight Stalinism and personally expressed disgust in a conversation with the Rabbi about the Division's subsequent role as perpetrators of the Holocaust in Ukraine. Also in February 1942, Sheptytsky sent a letter to Heinrich Himmler protesting the Holocaust in Ukraine. to protest Nazi atrocities. According to historian Ronald Rychlak, "A German Foreign Office agent named 'Frederic' was sent in a tour through various Nazi occupied and satellite countries during the war. He wrote in his confidential report to the German Foreign Office on September 19, 1943, that Metropolitan Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky, of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, remained adamant in saying that the killing of Jews was an inadmissable act. 'Frederic' went on to comment that Sheptytsky made the same statements and used the same phrasing as the French, Belgian, and Dutch bishops, as if they were all receiving instructions from the Vatican." One of the rabbis whose life was saved by Metropolitan Sheptytsky, David Kahane, stated: "Andrew Sheptytsky deserves the undying gratitude of the Jews and the honorific title 'Prince of the Righteous'". In addition, among the Jews who, thanks to Sheptytsky's help, survived the war were Lili Pohlmann and her mother, Adam Daniel Rotfeld (later Poland's foreign minister), two sons of the chief rabbi of Katowice (including the prominent cardiac surgeon Leon Chameides). Sheptytsky maintained contacts with the Polish underground and tried to mediate in the Polish Ukrainian conflict. In the autumn of 1941, he met with Jerzy Braun, an envoy of Government Delegate for Poland Cyryl Ratajski and General Stefan Rowecki, Commander in Chief of the ZWZ, to whom he made a proposal to delegate two Ukrainian representatives to the National Council in London. Sheptytsky was also a patron of artists, students, including many Orthodox Christians, and a pioneer of ecumenismhe also opposed the Second Polish Republic policies of linguistic imperialism, coercive Polonisation, and the forced conversion of Greek Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainians into Latin Rite Catholics. He strove for reconciliation between ethnic groups and wrote frequently on social issues and spirituality. He also founded the Studite and Ukrainian Redemptorist orders, a hospital, the National Museum, and the Theological Academy. He actively supported various Ukrainian organizations such as the Prosvita and in particular, the Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization, and donated a campsite in the Carpathian Mountains called Sokil and became the patron saint of the Plast fraternity Orden Khrestonostsiv.

Jews who were saved thanks to actions of Andrey Sheptytsky have lobbied Yad Vashem for years to have him named Righteous Among the Nations, just as his brother Klymentiy Sheptytsky had been, but so far Yad Vashem has not done so, mostly due to concerns with his initial belief that German invaders would be better for Ukraine than the Soviet Union had been. The first monument to Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky was erected during his lifetime in 1932. It was destroyed by the Soviets in 1939. A new monument to Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky was inaugurated in Lviv on 29 July 2015, the 150th anniversary of his birth.