“No, never! Under any circumstances … I have said NO once and for all, and you can shoot me, and kill me, but you shall get from me no other word.”
His response to Soviet officials in 1945 offering to release him from the Gulag if he would agree to become a Russian Orthodox Priest.
His relics are in a church in Canada, I think. He died in exile as a result of his many tortures from the Soviets. Just one of the many “modern” Ukrainian Catholic martyrs commemorated this day.
Blessed Vasyl, pray for us.
https://bvmartyrshrine.com/about/his-life/
This link explains more about his holy life, and especially his devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, whose feast day is also today. He is one of my personal heroes. Thank you, Don, for mentioning him here.
He might look like a kindly old Ukrainian grandfather but he had a spine of steel and a fierce love of God and His Most Holy Mother. What the Soviets did to that old man to try to break him was diabolical.
Some of his fellow martyrs suffered the same sort of thing or even worse. :-(. May their holy example and prayers strengthen us.
Dear Vladiko Vasyl, pray for us in this tumultuous time
He might look like a kindly old Ukrainian grandfather but he had a spine of steel and a fierce love of God and His Most Holy Mother.
Such men are torches Cathy, sent by God to the rest of us to light our way in a frequently dark world.