Kyiv, Ukraine, Jun 6, 2017 / 05:02 am
Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, Major Archbishop Emeritus of Kyiv-Halych and former head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, died May 31 at the age of 84.
Among his many accomplishments as priest, bishop, and cardinal, he is well remembered for welcoming St. John Paul II on his visit to Kyiv and Lviv in Ukraine in 2001, when he was the first Pope to visit the former Soviet republic.
Cardinal Husar was born in 1933 in Lviv. He fled from the Soviets in Ukraine with his parents in 1944, first to Austria, and then to the United States in 1949. He studied at St. Basil's College Seminary in Stamford, Conn. in the early 1950s, and continued his studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington and at Fordham University in New York.
He was ordained a priest of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Stamford in March 1958 and taught at St. Basil's College Seminary until 1969. From 1966 to 1969 he was the pastor of Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church in Kerhonkson, N.Y.