Ukrainian Catholic ChurchAustralia, New Zealand and Oceania
Blessed Martyr Volodymyr Pryima
June 2, 2024
On the second Sunday after Pentecost, our Church prayerfully honours all the saints of Ukraine. Today we are telling about one of them, the Blessed Martyr Volodymyr Pryima, near whose relics we will pray together very soon during the Eparchial Pilgrimage to Canberra, June 8–9.
Blessed Martyr Volodymyr Pryima was born on July 17, 1906, in the village of Stradch in Yavoriv district, to the family of a cantor and secretary of the local church, Ivan Pryima and Anna Horalevych. It is obvious that the parents paid great attention to the Christian upbringing and education of their children because Volodymyr’s older brothers, Myron and Maxym, became priests. Volodymyr, after graduating from the Cantor School under Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyy, returned to his native village and continued his father’s work, becoming a cantor and a choir conductor in the parish church. He took an active part in the life of his parish. According to archival documents, he and the then parish priest, Fr. M. Voyakovsky, created the “Prosvita” reading room in Stradch, and he also held a leadership position in the village.
On November 10, 1931, Volodymyr married Maria Stoyko. They raised four children together. Volodymyr Pryima was a respected person in the village; his fellow villagers loved and appreciated him for his honesty and fairness. At the beginning of the Second World War, when it was already clear that danger was lurking, on June 26, 1941, Fr. Mykola Konrad was called to confess to a sick woman in a neighbouring village.
According to eyewitnesses, people attempted to dissuade the priest and told him not to go because of the terrible dangers. But Father Mykola could not violate his priestly duty and, despite all the danger, decided to go. Then the cantor, Volodymyr Pryima, said, “Father, I will not let you go by yourself; I will go with you.” Fr. Mykola Konrad dressed in his cassock and, together with cantor Volodymyr Pryima, left. They did not return.
As the priest and the cantor commenced their return journey, they were confronted by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. Incensed by seeing these men of God, the NKVD arrested Fr. Mykola and Volodymyr and started moving them towards Lviv. The villagers saw all this from a distance and informed Volodymyr’s wife, Maria, about what had happened. She caught up with the hostages in the neighbouring village of Yamelnya and threw herself on her husband’s chest. Then one of the NKVD offices wanted to shoot her, but the other, not wanting to waste bullets, began to beat the woman with a butt of his rifle, after which they left her unconscious and went on.
The following morning, the German army entered the village, but people were still forbidden to go to the forest. Almost a week later, when the danger had passed, the people went to look for their priest and cantor and found their bodies in a forest area called “Birok” on the outskirts of the nearby village of Yamlenya. Eyewitnesses testified that the cantor was badly mutilated: his ribs were broken, his body was cut, and his chest was pierced with a bayonet. Volodymyr Pryima was buried in the cemetery near the church in his native village.
On June 27, 2001, during his visit to Ukraine, Pope John Paul II proclaimed the layman — cantor Volodymyr Pryima a Blessed Martyr of the Holy Church together with 25 other new martyrs of the UGCC. In 2011, the relics of Blessed Volodymyr Pryima were exhumed and with much solemnity transferred to the parish church of the Dormition of the Most Holy in the village of Stradch, Yavoriv district, Lviv region. In September 2012, the Synod of Bishops of the UGCC, which took place in Winnipeg (Canada), proclaimed Blessed Volodymyr Pryima the patron of the laity. And on June 26, 2013, he was officially proclaimed the patron saint of lay Ukrainian Greek Catholics.
During his visit to Australia in September 2014, His Beatitude Patriarch Sviatoslav proclaimed the Church of St. Volodymyr in Canberra a place of pilgrimage for the faithful of the Melbourne Eparchy and handed over to us for worship the relics of the Blessed Martyr Volodymyr Pryima, which are now kept in the church in Canberra. During the Eparchial Pilgrimage to Canberra on June 8–9, we will have the opportunity to pray together near these relics.
