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. However he is most famous for his pastoral letter just before the outbreak of World War I in which he urged Ukrainians in Canada with reservist obligations to return to their homeland to enlist and fight. Their homeland was Austria, which soon was at war with Canada. Although he later retracted his letter, the damage was already done. 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. 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

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