Павло Василик

"- Bishop, how did you meet the day of the UGCC legalization? - This question must be asked to those who did not fight for the legalization. I didn’t meet it; I fought for it and lived for it. I proved it by my work and my patience to everything. I didn’t meet this legalization. I legalized it constantly since my priesthood, my diaconal ministry. I legalized it for all the time and I didn’t meet it. Because of the legalization, I doubled my work, I began to use every second for the good of the Church, to expand our Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. I couldn’t compose myself that one church in the district was enough for us. So some bishops said: "Do not do that, do not tease the Russians, for it will do harm to our Church." Our bishops and the priests under their leading believed that due to this teasing, KGB might not give us the right to worship freely. Unfortunately, there was such thinking there. So, they should be asked not me how they met the legalization. In fact, as for me, I lived with this spirit and legalized the Church since the first moment of my pastoral ministry, beginning since my diaconate. I already testified then that the Church exsisted. "

"It was 1939 what I could remember. The people in our village embraced the arrival of the Bolsheviks with the caution. No matter how much they tried to convince the people that they had come to liberate them and so on, but behind that it was atheistic propaganda. That is, first the religion classes were eliminated at schools, then there were obstacles in worshipping, their agitators were sent with music while serving Liturgies either in villages or towns where they had their units. The military men walked playing the accordions and in this way they bothered. Immediately we understood that the case was serious enough and we got into a trouble". - But there wasn’t the open persecution of priests there yet, was there? - Why not? It was in 1941 ... There is the village of Makova not far from Butych and Boryslavka. ... They took the priest to Przemysl and tortured him leaving no trace. Then the teachers began to disappear, as well as the village leaders and the educated men. That’s why, everybody was alerted. And most of all, when there was the defeat in 1941 they executed all the people by shooting demonstrably. When they were retreating, then I was just in the field and not only me but also the people… we would have been shot, if we had not escaped into the forest."

"Sakharov, an Academician, an ordinary man, by nationality - Jew, but as a person - Democrat, realized the situation, which was during the Bolshevik’s regime ... As for our Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, he supported it. Therefore, I had the opportunity to speak to him at the meeting in Luzhniki in Moscow. He regarded our Church with favor. We asked him to go on with our case of the UGCC legalization and its rehabilitation on the world stage. He promised and fulfilled it. This is the man who has remained in our memory as a very grand figure, as a true fighter, as a true democrat in this full sense. So, in the history of our nation and our Church, his name will never be forgotten. And we keep it ...When I taught the history of the Universal Church, the history of the Ukrainian Church at the Seminary in Ivano-Frankivsk, I often reminded his name and all those fighters’, who fought, not being Ukrainians, not even Greek Catholics, and worried about the cause of our Church, understood that it was also their duty in this common struggle of us and all the people that were enslaved by the Bolshevik regime. "

"When German time was ... I cannot say that there was something good for us from the Germans. No. And at least from those schools they could roll into any high schools, these or those boys were taken because there was such an instruction there. Nobody knew confidence in the future and, moreover, the wars changed one by another, those towns were already bombed on. Although the Germans did not intervene in the church affairs, but they disturbed by taking the people to Germany. My brother was taken away to Germany, as well as one my uncle and another and many young people. So we lived in the great fears all the time, both in towns and in villages, thus, that oppression was felt badly. And what was far worse that we could experience it. Our people said that the first Soviets were good, even better, because they stayed for a bit and then they fled, while the latter Soviets were harder. But we got two years of the German occupation most of all. They were bad and terrible conditions. As for the religious life - at first we were free, but the Church is people, and everything was oppressed. As if everything Ukrainian was allowed but all the intellectuals were destroyed by the Germans".