From Balnycia to Philadelphia: Retired Archbishop writes memoirs of spiritual journey

By Lou Baldwin
CS&T Staff Writer

There was nothing in the early life of Stephen Sulyk that would suggest he would one day be Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia and one of the foremost members of his Church. It has been an interesting, tumultuous life for the now-retired-archbishop, as seen by his recently published memoir, “I Am With You Always” (Winepress Pub., Enumclaw, Wash.).
He was born in 1924 in Balnycia, Western Ukraine, in a village so tiny and remote the thatch-roofed houses had no electricity or running water and an automobile had never traversed its dirt roads. The villagers, except for a few Jewish families, were members of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, one of the Eastern churches in full communion with the Holy Father.
Balnycia was then under the sovereignty of Poland, but caught between the hammer of Germany and the anvil of the Soviet Union. When the two dictatorships divided Poland in 1939, Balnycia was occupied by the Germans.
The following year, Stephen was picked up by border guards and put on a train for Germany, where, as a forced laborer, he was put to work with a family that cultivated a large apple orchard. After about a year, his employer permitted him to return home for a short vacation, and he never went back.
Stephen was admitted to one of the few high schools the Nazis permitted in the occupied territory. Here he became a student leader, but resisted efforts to have him enlist in a Ukrainian division of the German Army.
The Russians arrived in 1944, and Stephen was among the many Ukrainians who opted to flee to Germany rather than live under the even-worse tyranny of the Soviets.
Shortly after once again being forced into labor, he fled to Sudetenland, now part of the Czech Republic. Here the fluency with languages he had picked up during his travels helped him obtain a post as a translator, a position he kept even after the Soviet armies arrived in that area.
It was not long before he was on the move again. Thanks to more forged travel documents, he once more fled, this time to the American-occupied zone of Germany, where he finished his high school education while living at a refugee camp for Ukrainians.
After toying with the idea of medical school, in 1946 he opted for his mother’s dream — the seminary.
The unlikely place to begin his priestly formation was Hirschberg Castle near Munich. Mussolini stayed there briefly after his fall from power, and now the American army turned it over to the Ukrainian Catholic Church for use as a seminary.
Meanwhile, whatever his future, there was no going back to Balnycia. All of the local residents were expelled to the Soviet Union by the Russians –– their houses were razed and their farms given to Poles, presumably some of those who’d been expelled from their homes when their territory was annexed by Russia.
“The poor people were crying bitter tears when they had to part with their homes and property for the last time and go to unknown lands among strange people,” Archbishop Sulyk writes.
Fortunately, he was living in the American-occupied sector of Germany and had an uncle who emigrated to Michigan before the war. In 1948, the young seminarian received permission to emigrate to the United States.
After brief employment in an auto assembly plant and a meatpacking facility in Dearborn, Mich., in 1949, he entered St. Josaphat Seminary in Washington D.C.
He was ordained in 1952. His memoir continues with his half-century career as a parish priest, a diocesan official, archbishop, and finally his retirement to an apartment in Lansdowne.
In the book, he chronicles the Ukrainian Catholic Church’s struggle to maintain its identity in a new culture. He discusses with startling candor his views on Ukrainian Catholic-Orthodox relations, as well as Ukrainian Catholic-Roman Catholic relations and the often complex inner workings of his own church.
While all that should well be of interest to future historians, this reader was most taken by his early struggle, which reveals the tenacity of the Eastern Church as its members maintained religious faith despite harsh persecution.
Archbishop Sulyk’s memoir title is influenced by his friendship with Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek, a missionary to Eastern Europe who spent 22 years in grim Russian prisons, including Moscow’s dread Lubianka Prison. Father Ciszek related to him how the Ukrainian prisoners remained steadfast in faith no matter what their atheistic captors did. “Your Ukrainian nation and your church are indestructible,” the priest told him.
He himself was able to endure, Father Ciszek said, because “I always kept in mind that I am not alone –– God is always with me.”
It was a truth the future archbishop well understood. God had been with him in all of his times of trial.

Contact Lou Baldwin at (215) 587-3672 or lbaldwin@adphila.org