Zynoviy Kovalyk

Zynoviy Kovalyk ( – sometimes spelled Zenon or Zenobius; 18 August 1903 – 1941) was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Redemptorist priest and martyr.

Family background

Zynoviy Kovalyk was born in the village of Ivachiv Horishnii, near Ternopil in Austrian Galicia (modern-day western Ukraine). His family were peasant workers and were devout Christians. He was known to have a good singing voice, a joyful temperament, and to be a person of strong character.

After the novitiate, he studied philosophy and theology in Belgium. He returned to Ukraine and was ordained a priest on 9 August 1932, celebrating his first Liturgy in his village of Ivachiv on 4 September 1932.

Immediately before the Soviet invasion of 1939 he traveled to the Redemptorist monastery in Lviv and assumed the position of bursar. On the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, 15 August 1940, he gave a homily which reportedly drew some ten thousand faithful.

Arrest and death

On 20 December 1940, the Soviet secret police took Kovalyk from his monastery on account of the sermon he had preached on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (8 December).

On 22 June 1941, German troops began their offensive against the Soviet Union and the city of Lviv fell seven days later. As the German army advanced, the Soviets guards executed 7,000 prisoners prior to retreat. Witnesses claim that, rather than simply shooting Kovalyk, he was crucified on a corridor wall of the prison, his stomach ripped open and a dead human foetus inserted.

On 24 April 2001, along with several other Redemptorists, Kovalyk was recognised by the Holy See as being a martyr. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 27 June 2001 during the pope's pastoral visit to Ukraine. 27 June is the feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, patroness of the Redemptorists.

Legacy In his memoirs, Yaroslav Levytskyi recounts Kovalyk's sermons and the risk they invoked. '[His] sermons made an incredible impression on his listeners. But in the prevailing system of denunciations and terror this was very dangerous for a preacher. So I often tried to convince Father Kovalyk... that [he] needed to be more careful about the content of his sermons, that he shouldn't provoke the Bolsheviks, because here was a question of his own safety. But it was all in vain. Fathey Kovalyk only had one answer:"If that is God's will, I will gladly accept death, but as a preacher I will never act against my conscience."'