Witness of the Silent Church

A Witness of the Silent Church is a first-hand personal witness to the life of one of the outstanding religious leaders in the Catholic Church and the confessor of faith. It presents the autobiography of Cardinal Josyf Slipyj (1892-1984), who served as a head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in the period of the Soviet regime (1944-1984) and led his Church through the difficult period of catacombs and persecutions.

This memoir traces the trajectory and main events of Slipyj’s life and sheds light on his personality and inner world of his thoughts and intentions. They cover his childhood and formation period, his pastoral and scholarly ministry in the Church, as well as his suffering in prisons, camps, and exile until his liberation in 1963. Slipyj’s life story appears as a backdrop where the entire epoch unfolds. The reader can observe the religious life of Western Ukraine against the background of the complex religious, political and social developments of the twentieth century, the martyrology and underground activity of the Greek Catholics during the period of Church persecution, the dire fate of the clergy, faithful, and cultural and political leaders in the Soviet time.

A Witness of the Silent Church is supplied with extensive commentaries and annotations that provide important insights into the religious life of Ukraine of this period. The introduction to Slipyj’s autobiography presents the complicated textual history of the manuscript, its historical value and prepares a reader for the historically-contextualized reading of these memoirs. Slipyj’s autobiography is supplemented with the two studies, which complete Slipyj’s unfinished narrative, elucidating the circumstances of Slipyj’s release from the Gulag and his activity in Rome during the last twenty years of his life (1963-1984) as well as the events following his death: such as Slipyj’s rehabilitation and the glorious return of his relics to the homeland. The book includes appendices with valuable historical documents related to the activity of Cardinal Josyf Slipyj as a witness of the silent Church of the martyrs.

This book is intended for scholars, church historians, and all readers interested in the history of Catholic Church, Christian testimony of faith and the biographies of twentieth-century martyrs and confessors.

Josyf Slipyj (1892-1984) was a Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and a cardinal of the Catholic Church.

Iwan Dacko is President of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies of the Ukrainian Catholic University.

Mariya Horyacha is an independent scholar.