Ivan Ziatyk

Life as a Redemptorist Despite resistance from this superiors in the Church, on June 15, 1935, Ziatyk began his novitiate with the Redemptorists. Although he was already an ordained priest, he was required to spend a year in the novitiate, located in Hołosko, a town just outside Lwów (now Holosko, a suburb of Lviv, Ukraine), making his first profession in August 1936.

During his first year as a Redemptorist, Ziatyk lived in the monastery dedicated to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine). However, in autumn of the following year, he moved back to Lwów, to support a monastery there whose director had been absent, serving as both assistant superior and treasurer.

Persecution and death

After the Second World War, the Soviet regime renewed its oppression of Christian denominations. The Soviets sought to abolish the Ukrainian Catholic Church by merging it with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which was considered easier to control as it was both state-sanctioned and did not acknowledge the spiritual leadership of the Bishop of Rome.

In 1946, all Greek-Catholic bishops were arrested and, by spring, the Soviet secret police had arrested all Redemptorists in Ternopil, Stanislaviv, Lviv, and Zboiska, relocating them to an unheated wing of the monastery in Holosko.

Eventually, Ziatyk came under extreme scrutiny; Soviet leadership called for his arrest on January 5, 1950 and a warrant for his arrest was issued on January 20. During his imprisonment, he was repeatedly tortured. On Good Friday 1952, he was taken from his cell, beaten with sticks, soaked in water, and exposed in the Siberian wilderness. He died in the prison hospital on May 17, 1952.

In an interview with one of Ziatyk's fellow prisoners, Antolii Medellian, he said:

On April 6, 2001, the Holy See recognized Ivan Ziatyk as being a martyr and he was beatified by Pope John Paul II on June 27, the feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the patroness of the Redemptorists.