SYDNEY (OSV News) — God works in mysterious ways, but the Holy Father is even more mysterious, Cardinal-designate Mykola Bychok, eparch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Australia and Oceania, told The Catholic Weekly on the day of his appointment.
He learned of his appointment, like many other Catholics did, from reading the news online on Oct. 6 and said he will be “in shock for days, weeks and maybe months.”
“For me, it’s a great mystery. God works in mysterious ways, and the pope works in mysterious ways, under God! To fulfill this will of God will be a huge challenge for me, and a really difficult cross,” he said.
Cardinal-designate Bychok, a Redemptorist, will be the youngest cardinal in the Catholic Church, and only the eighth cardinal in both the history of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and of Australia.
He was appointed to the Eparchy of Sts. Peter and Paul in Melbourne in 2020 at age 41, but was prevented from taking his episcopal seat for almost a year by COVID-19. His first experience of Australia was a month of hotel quarantine during the pandemic.
Ordained to the priesthood in only 2005, his early ministry was typified by the missionary activity beloved by Pope Francis, which may offer a clue as to why he was appointed.
His first appointment was to the coal-mining city of Prokopyevsk in Siberia, where he ministered to Ukrainian Greek Catholics descended from those exiled or forcibly resettled by the Soviets in the 1950s and ’60s.
He celebrated the Divine Liturgy in apartments or private homes and would travel through thick snow hundreds of miles to see a handful of parishioners — which had his fellow Redemptorists joking that the 25-year-old priest must have received the assignment as a penance.
When he arrived in Australia in 2021, he brought that same dynamism with him, driving across the continent to visit his people in Perth and Darwin, on Australia’s western and northern peripheries.
Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, currently in Rome for the Synod on Synodality, congratulated Cardinal-designate Bychok and asked Australian Catholics to pray for him.
“It is my sincere wish that this appointment brings both great joy and hope for the people of Ukraine, and Ukrainians in Australia who pray for peace and the end to senseless violence in their homeland,” Archbishop Fisher said.
He was also congratulated by the Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, his brother bishops in the Australian bishops’ conference, Australia’s papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles Balvo, and his mother, whom he spoke to by phone on Oct. 7.
Much like the cardinal-designate, his mother had only just come to terms with her son’s appointment as a bishop on the other side of the globe — only to feel shock, like her son, on Oct. 6.
“The same, but maybe double!” he said. “To be a cardinal is a huge responsibility, not only for the church in Australia in Ukraine, but worldwide.”
By coincidence, the cardinal-designate was in Sydney for a ceremony honoring Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is visiting Australia, and prayed at the tomb of Cardinal George Pell soon after receiving news of his appointment.
Cardinal-designate Bychok paid tribute to his predecessor as cardinal, who died early in 2023, for his witness to the faith and perseverance during his time in jail for abuse offenses, for which he was ultimately exonerated.
“Cardinal Pell, besides all his trials, was faithful to God. He proclaimed the Word of God until the end — he was a true apostle of Christian values. That’s what I would like to carry into my ministry as cardinal,” Cardinal-designate Bychok said.
In a statement shortly after his appointment, he also honored his predecessor cardinals of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
“I will endeavor to follow the worthy example of my predecessor cardinals,” the cardinal-designate said, singling out 20th-century Cardinals Myroslav Lubachivsky, Lubomyr Husar and Josyf Slipyj.
Cardinal Slipyj, one of the most esteemed churchmen of his time, spent nearly two decades in the Soviet gulag and was the inspiration for Australian author Morris West’s bestselling novel “The Shoes of the Fisherman.”
“After his release after 18 years in a Soviet gulag and moving to Rome, (he) became the voice of our church in the free world and, using various forums, emphasized the persecution of the churches in the USSR and called for more radical actions to protect the rights of believers,” Cardinal-designate Bychok said of Cardinal Slipyj.
The cardinal-designate — who will be Australia’s sole cardinal after the consistory Dec. 8 when the pope will create 21 new cardinals — said it was a “special sign” for the small but proud Ukrainian church in Australia, and would be a “breath of fresh air” for a country whose migrant population is among its most faithful.
“It’s a special sign, especially for our small eparchy. We are huge by territory, but small by numbers, which is good for us — huge support, a huge privilege,” he said. “Here, for our eparchy, for all Oceania, as well as Ukraine and the Ukrainian church. Ukraine is experiencing immense upheaval, because of the war of the last two and a half years.”
“How will the war end? Only God knows — people begin wars, but God ends them,” he said.
He said that for Australia, “it’s a breath of fresh air” and that he had “never thought about this,” that he’d become a cardinal at such a young age.
“In that sense it’s a huge support and will strengthen our church in Australia, and the whole Australian nation, which should rediscover Christian values,” he said.
“This wave of secularization, it’s really not good for Australia. We should re-establish, rediscover Christian values, for the Australian people,” he said, pointing to the rich migrant Christian communities not only from Ukraine, “but from Vietnam, India, the Philippines. They are really faithful. They go to church. I wish this spirit and dedication would extend to all Australian people.”
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