УК

Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of the Holy Family of London

About

Eparchy of Holy Family of London is an eparchy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church that takes care of Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Great Britain and that’s why embraces the whole of England, Scotland, and Wales. The total area of the eparchy is 242 495 km2 and the population is about 65 648 100 people.

Because of the small number of parishes, the eparchy of the Holy Family of London is not divided into protopresbytery.

Parish communities exist in the following cities:

  • Bolton
  • Bradford
  • Cardiff
  • Coventry
  • Derby
  • Edinburgh
  • Gloucester
  • Leicester
  • London
  • Manchester
  • Nottingham
  • Oldham
  • Peterborough
  • Rochdale
  • Wolverhampton
  • Belarusian Mission
  • Hungarian Mission

According to the statistics from 2010, there are 10 thousand faithful on the territory of the eparchy of London. 18 priests of whom 12 are eparchial, 5 hieromonks, and 1 deacon perform their pastoral ministry. In total, their work is concentrated in 12 parishes. Besides this, there are 5 monks and 1 nun in the eparchy.

Location

Bishop

Since the 21st March of 2020, His Eminence Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski has been the ruling Archbishop of the Eparchy of the Holy Family of London (Great Britain).

The Cathedral of the Holy Family is the cathedral of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Eparchy of the Holy Family of London.

History

The earliest significant group of Ukrainian immigrants in Great Britain, who settled in Manchester between the 1890s and the outbreak of the First World War, were mostly Catholics of the Byzantine rite. They initially attended services at the Roman Catholic church of St Chad and later joined the parish of St Casimir, which was established in 1904 to serve, primarily, Manchester’s Polish and Lithuanian immigrants. After the closure of this parish in 1931, St Chad’s once again became the main place of worship for the Manchester Ukrainians. From 1932 the Rev. Louis van den Bossche, a Byzantine-rite Catholic priest from Belgium, visited St Chad’s several times a year to celebrate mass for the Ukrainian congregation. After his death, these visits were continued by the Rev. Jacques Perridon from France (1938–39 and 1944–47).

​Between the First and Second World Wars, a number of high-ranking figures in the UCC made visits to Great Britain: the Metropolitan of Galicia, Andrei Sheptytskyj (1921), Bishop Mykola Charnetskyj, the apostolic visitor for Ukrainian Catholics in Poland outside the boundaries of Galicia, (1932 and 1937), and the Rev. Josyf Slipyj, rector of the Graeco-Catholic Theological Academy in Lviv and future head of the UCC (1935).

During and immediately after the Second World War, a number of Ukrainian priests served in Britain as military chaplains for Ukrainian Catholics in the Canadian armed forces based in the country, and in the Polish Armed Forces under British command. The process of organizing the UCC-GB began during the large-scale influx of Ukrainians into the country in the immediate post-war years. In November 1946 the Rome-based Bishop Ivan Buchko was appointed Apostolic Visitor with personal jurisdiction over Ukrainian Catholics throughout Western Europe.

​In March 1949 Bishop Buchko established a separate Vicariate General for England and Scotland and appointed the Rev. (later Bishop) Volodymyr Malanczuk as the first Vicar General of the UCC-GB.

On 10 June 1957, the Holy See issued a Papal decree on the establishment of the Apostolic Exarchate for Ukrainian Catholics in England and Wales. William Godfrey, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster (and Сardinal from 1958), was appointed as the first Exarch, while the day-to-day administration of the Exarchate rested with his Vicar General: initially the Rev. Malynowskyj, then, after his death in November 1957, the Rev. Paul Maluga from Canada. In August 1961 the first Ukrainian Catholic bishop in Great Britain, Augustine Horniak, was appointed Auxiliary Bishop to the Exarch, and in April 1963, after the death of Cardinal Godfrey, Bishop Horniak was appointed Exarch.

By a decree of March 1967, the jurisdiction of the Exarchate was extended to include Scotland (with effect from May 1968), and it was renamed the Apostolic Exarchate for Ukrainian Catholics in Great Britain. In September 1987 Bishop Horniak resigned, and Bishop Michael Hrynchyshyn, the Apostolic Exarch of France, was appointed Administrator of the Exarchate in Great Britain. A new Exarch for Great Britain, Bishop Michael Kuchmiak, was appointed in June 1989. He remained in this position until his retirement in April 2002 and was succeeded by Bishop Paul Chomnycky. In January 2006 Bishop Chomnycky became Bishop of the UCC Eparchy of Stamford, USA. As a result, the position of Exarch for Great Britain became vacant and the Rev. Benjamin Lysykanych became Administrator of the Exarchate. In June 2009 Bishop Hlib Lonchyna became Administrator of the Exarchate, before being appointed Exarch in June 2011.

In January 2013 the Exarchate was elevated to the rank of an Eparchy (equivalent to an eparchy in the Western Church) with the title of Eparchy of the Holy Family of London, and Bishop Lonchyna was appointed as the first Eparch. In December 2014, after the death of the Apostolic Visitor for Belarusian Catholics of the Byzantine rite outside Belarus, the Belarusian Catholic Mission in Great Britain was attached to the UCC Eparchy of London.

In May 2015, the first Eparchial Council was held with the participation of the eparch, priests, and representatives of the faithful parishes of the eparchy

Throughout the history of the UCC-GB, the priests who carried out their ministry for the longest time (15 years or more) are Oleksandr Babiy, Ivan Bilyk, Stepan Vivcharuk, Yarema Havryliuk, Ivan Hasiak, Volodymyr Dzoba, Mykola Korchagin, Irinei Kraichyi, Avgustyn Kuzma, Yefgen Kushko, Josafat Leshchyshyn, Bohdan Lysykanych, Oleksandr Markevych, Mykola Matychak, Antin Mychalskyi, Ivan Muzychka, Stepan Orach, Vasyl Paslavskyi, Liubomyr Pidluskyi, Mykhailo Ratushynskyi, Yaroslav Riy, Stepan Soltys, Teodor Tysak, Andriy Choma, Volodymyr Choma.

The nuns of the Congregation of Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church who came from different countries have been serving in Great Britain for years. The first group settled in 1957 in Bradford. And from 1963 other sisters are in London. In the middle of 2017, in Bradford, there was one nun and in London two.

Contacts

Address: 21–22 Binney Street, London W1 K 5 BQ, Great Britain

Phone: +44 (0) 20-7629-10-73
Fax: +44 (0) 20-7355-33-14

Email: [email protected]

Website: ucc-gb.com