Archbishop Mstyslav Skrypnyk at the Second Vatican Council: The Circumstances of the Invitation and Its Consequences
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2640.2026.162.3
Keywords:
Українська Греко-Католицька Церква (УГКЦ), Другий Ватиканський Собор, українське православʿя, екуменізм, Йосиф Сліпий, Максим Германюк, Мстислав Скрипник, Йоганнес ВіллебрандсAbstract
Background. Scholarly literature on the UGCC and the Second Vatican Council has focused predominantly on two themes: debates over the patriarchate and the decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum. The ecumenical dimension — the question of involving Orthodox Ukrainians in the Council — has remained on the margins of the field, despite its important place in the UGCC's episcopal diplomacy during the pre-conciliar and conciliar years. This article analyses the UGCC's ecumenical strategy regarding Ukrainian Orthodox participation in the Second Vatican Council and the sole concrete outcome of that strategy — the visit of Archbishop Mstyslav Skrypnyk of the UOC in the USA to Rome in November 1963, which simultaneously represented the culmination and, to a considerable degree, the failure of the Greek Catholic hierarchy's efforts.
The aim of this article is twofold: first, to reconstruct the UGCC's ecumenical strategy for engaging Orthodox Ukrainian hierarchs as observers at the Second Vatican Council (1957–1963); and second, to analyse the mechanism, circumstances, and consequences of Archbishop Mstyslav Skrypnyk's visit to Rome in November 1963 as the only realised yet institutionally unsanctioned instance of Orthodox presence at the Council.
Methods. The study employs methods of historiographical analysis and synthesis, source criticism, and comparative-historical analysis.
Results. The analysis shows that the Orthodox bishops effectively bound their own hands through the Winnipeg Declaration of 1960, which transformed the question of conciliar participation from an ecclesial into a church-national identity issue. Archbishop Mstyslav Skrypnyk's arrival in Rome in November 1963 broke this collective consensus and was made possible only through a circumventing mechanism: the invitation came from the Conference of Ukrainian Catholic Bishops rather than through the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, allowing Mstyslav to present the journey as a personal initiative undertaken without an official mandate from his Church. The diaries of Metropolitan Hermaniuk and Mons. Willebrands, together with archival materials drawn upon here for the first time, allow this mechanism to be reconstructed in detail and demonstrate that the indirect route was not accidental but a deliberate decision by both parties. Yet rather than opening a path to broader Orthodox participation, Mstyslav's visit provided Metropolitan Ilarion Ohiienko with a convenient pretext to close the matter definitively in April 1965.
Conclusions. The profound asymmetry of ecclesial memory and the institutional logic of self-definition among Orthodox structures formed in opposition to Catholicism rendered ecumenical rapprochement structurally impossible — despite sustained episcopal diplomacy, personal relationships, and shared national aspirations.
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