Metropolitan Andrey (The Movie)

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It’s rare that anything other than a documentary about one of the Eastern Catholic Churches comes out, much less an excellent feature film. The first time I saw Vladyka Andrey I was literally left speechless for the remainder of the evening (no mean feat - ask my wife or sons). Serhiy Romaniuk gives a stellar performance in the lead role, and Oles Yanchuk has his greatest film yet. It can now be purchased in US DVD format from several places, including Yevshan.

To have gone through the cataclysmic events that Vladyka Andrey did such as World War I and II, the Soviet revolution, the decline of both the Polish and Tsarist states, the Holodomor, and the attempted liquidation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church itself is a feat in itself.

Add to that the constant partioning of his own country separating his faithful under several governments, the establishment of diaspora communities in Europe, North and South America (from Canada to Argentina), Australia, all the difficulties that went with being a misunderstood minority amongst the Latins in most of those diasporal communities (Bishop Ireland, Cum Data Fuerit, etc.), the obvious difficulties in communicating with his hierarchy, and continual physical ailments and to have the success he did is not only amazing but an incredible witness to what the Savior can do through His servants.
FDRLB
 
Is this movie at least dubbed in English, or does it have English subtitles?
 
This saintly man also saved many Jews and their children during the Holocaust in World War Two, hiding them in St. George’s Cathedral in Lviv and other places. He could speak and write Hebrew. He gave to Jewish charities. (He still has not been recognized by Yad Vashem as a righteous Gentile).

He was arrested by Tsarist Russia and spent time incarcerated in Russia.

He wrote a personal letter to Himmler during World War Two: “Thou Shalt Not Kill” which could have got him killed.

He called the Nazis monsters, worse than the Bolsheviks. He tried to help Ukrainians in that part of Ukraine under Stalin’s rule at the time in the 1930s when some 7 million Ukrainians perished in a genocidal famine at the hands of Soviet Russia. He was Metropolitan also during the bloody Soviet Occupation of Western Ukraine in 1939-1941 when the Soviets banned all teaching of religion in schools and the Soviet Secret Police filled up their bloody prisons with Ukrainian activists.

He cared for his flock, and suffered much in life.

He died just at the end of the war before the Ukrainian Catholic Church was forcibly liquidated (bishops, hierarchy, priests, laity tortured, killed or sent to the Gulag) with the help of the at-that-time compliant Russian Orthodox Church. Yet his Church survived that incredible Golgotha - and is strong today. A Miracle indeed.
 
He could speak and write Hebrew. He gave to Jewish charities. (He still has not been recognized by Yad Vashem as a righteous Gentile).
Does this really matter?
 
bpbasilphx said:
He could speak and write Hebrew. He gave to Jewish charities. (He still has not been recognized by Yad Vashem as a righteous Gentile).
Does this really matter?
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Yes it matters, because he risked his life during World War Two. I quoted it because I wrote a university essay on Sheptytsky and one of the students in the class (an M.A.) was Jewish (who could read Hebrew) and he was amazed at Sheptytsky’s letters and the efforts he made in Catholic outreach to the Jewish community in Halychyna during the war. If you believe this counts for nothing in a Catholic hierarch, well that’s your viewpoint. The point is Metropolitan Sheptytsky thought it mattered! May God Bless Him! Had any Catholic Pope or Orthodox Patriarch been able to do this, it also would be noted.
 
My point is, what does it matter to the Church what Jews in general, or Yad Vashem in particular think about ANY member of the Church, either Met. Andrey or Pope Pius XII?

This is STRICTLY an internal matter.

The deliberate slander of ONE play (The Deputy) is causing an inaccurate perception of Pope Pius XII.
 
bpbasilphx said:
My point is, what does it matter to the Church what Jews in general, or Yad Vashem in particular think about ANY member of the Church, either Met. Andrey or Pope Pius XII?

This is STRICTLY an internal matter.

The deliberate slander of ONE play (The Deputy) is causing an inaccurate perception of Pope Pius XII.
Click to expand...
Hey, I agree with you brother. After you posted, I thought that this may have been what you were getting at, but you bunched in my quote of him giving to Jewish charities as well…so I was not entirely clear on what you were criticizing: Yad Vashem’s significance to the matter or his beneficence to Jewish charities. Thanks for the clarification now. I guess misunderstandings happen when I post, as I often do, before falling asleep. At the back of my mind I thought that’s what you were getting at.

On Pope Pius XII, yes. But there are still Jewish writers who do defend Pope Pius XII in spite of all the critics. And it should be pointed out unfortunately that many former Catholics (i.e. John Cornwell) have jumped on the anti-Pius bandwagon. He has been slandered by certain authors, no doubt. World War Two was an incredibly difficult time. But that would have to be the subject of another thread probably in another sub-forum. God Bless! 🙂
 
Even before I read Rabbi David Dalin, I felt that the popular perception of Pius XII (at least when I reached adulthood) was as unfair as the attacks on the Patriarchs of Moscow during the Soviet ascendancy.

THEY were the ones who actually had to deal with issues and sit in the hot seat, not us.
 
Has anyone ever heard of an old movie called “The Prisoner,” with Alex Guiness? It was about a bishop who was imprisoned by the secular authorities for “treason” and tortured to confess. The movie was banned when it first came out by the Venice and Cannes Film Festivals. Though the bishop is obviously Latin, the context seems to be Eastern Europe after WW2. No actual names or places are given in the movie. Seems to have been a general social commentary. It seems the movie reflected the situation of many Catholic prelates in Eastern Europe after WW2.

Blessings
 
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