Nykyta Budka

Nykyta Budka
Born	7 June 1877,Dobromirka, Austria-Hungary
Died	1 October 1949,Karaganda, USSR
Means of martyrdom	Gulag
Beatified	27 June 2001, Ukraine by Pope John Paul II

Blessed Nykyta Budka (June 7, 1877, Dobromirka, Austria-Hungary - October 1, 1949, Karaganda, USSR) was a clergyman of the of Ukrainian Catholic Church who lived and worked in Austria-Hungary, Canada, Poland, and the Soviet Union. In Canada he is noted as the first bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada. His first name is sometimes written as Nikita or Mykyta.

He was born in a village in Zbarazh, then part of Galicia, in Austria-Hungary in 1877. Budka was ordained as a priest in L'viv, the capital of Austrian Galicia, in 1905.

He was appointed the Bishop for Canada on July 15, 1912 and consecrated on October 14 that year. In Canada he became known as a strident defender of the autonomy of the Ukrainian church from the Latin hierarchy, and a fierce opponent of missionary actives amongst Ukrainian Canadian by Russian Orthodox and Protestant churches, and of secularism. He was broadly supportive of Ukrainian nationalism.^[1] However he is most famous for his pastoral letter at the outbreak of World War I in which he urged Ukrainians in Canada to return to their homeland to enlist and fight. Their homeland was Austria, which happened to be at war with Canada, so this bordered on treason. This helped inflame an existing suspicion and scrutiny of the Ukrainian Canadian community by the wider public and the government that led to the internment of Ukrainians in Canada during the war.

In 1927, he returned to now Polish-controlled Galicia and became vicar general of the Metropolitan Curia in L'viv. At the end of World War II, Galicia was occupied by the Soviet Union, and Budka opposed the communist-mandated separation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church from Rome, and for this he was imprisoned on April 11, 1945 along with other bishops.^[2] He died in the Gulag on October 1, 1949.

Budka was beatified as a martyr on June 27, 2001 by Pope John Paul II.

References

1. ^ http://books.google.ca/books?id=71Wnflm9lYgC&pg=PA381&lpg=PA381&dq=Budka+war&source=bl&ots=aScz5luYcq&sig=PbWZ3REFne0qEJ0fdWySaIZEPo4&hl=en&ei=0m7bS_XTO5v4MY2X1YUB&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CCYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Budka%20war&f=false
2. ^ "Uniates Appealed to World; "Soviet Trick" Charged". New York Times. 19 March 1946. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10616FC395D177A93CBA81788D85F428485F9&scp=70&sq=Budka&st=cse. Retrieved 17 January 2009. 

• Pioneer Bishop, Pioneer Times: Nykyta Budka in Canada by Stella Hryniuk
• Profile on catholic-hierarchy.org
• Biography of newly beatified martyrs from Ukrainian Weekly

Persondata
Name	Budka, Nykyta
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	7 June 1877
Place of birth	Dobromirka, Austria-Hungary
Date of death	1 October 1949
Place of death	Karaganda, USSR