Most Reverend Canonic Iryney Bilyk, OSBM

The youngest of four children of Ivan and Anna nee Krent bishop Irynei Bilyk was born January 2, 1950 in the Lviv region in Western Ukraine,

At the age of seven he began his elementary education in his native village but continued it in Dobromyl where his family moved in 1960. In 1965 he was forced to interrupt his academic education as a result of repressive measures against his parents for the religious and patriotic upbringing of their children, as well as his own refusal to join the Comsomol, an organization for Communist youth.

He enrolled in the Lviv Technical Institute of telecommunications and continued to take evening classes in a high school in the nearby region to complete his academic education. But in 1967 he was forced again to interrupt his education because of government pressures for his religious convictions. He entered the State University of Lviv to study physics only to be expelled in six months because the government would not allow him to study there.

That same year in the fall he began his novitiate in the Basilian Order. He studied philosophy and theology in underground Basilian monastery. In 1968 he was forced to leave Galicia and moved to Uzhorod where he enrolled to study physics at Uzhorod State University. But even there he fell under the watchful eye of the KGB because of his continued close ties with the Catholic priests and bishops in the underground in Galicia and Transcarpathia. He was in contact with Bishop Alexander Chira, Josaphat Fedoryk and Sofron Dmyterko. In addition, he was staying with the family of Sister Theofilia Manaylo, OSBM, who witnessed the murder of Bishop Theodor Romzha by a KGB agent. Living in the same house were other students with same religious and patriotic convictions with whom we often celebrated Divine Liturgies.

Based on some falsified accusations in 1972, in his last semester of studies, he was expelled from the University and called for two years of active duty in the military to served on the anti aircraft defense command post 100 meters underground.

After completing his military service with an honorable discharge and a recommendation from the army, he was permitted to continue to study physics at Kyiv State University. In 1977 he completed his studies and received an appointment as a professor and a researcher in the scientific research institute in Kyiv. But because of renewed persecution from the KGB, he was forced to quit, and assigned to work in the scientific expedition of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kabardyno-Balkar in the Central Caucus region, 2100 meters above sea level. He worked there for almost ten years.

There he invited two monks from his order, who later became priests. While there he discovered the possibility of frequent and unimpeded business travel to Ukraine. It enabled him to maintain close ties with the underground Ukrainian Catholic Church and to continue to his clandestine theological studies.

In 1978 he made his final vows, and Bishop Sofron Dmyterko secretly ordained him a priest. In underground conditions he celebrated Divine Liturgies in the Lviv, Zakarpathian, and Volhyn regions, Kyiv, Moscow, and even Kazakhstan and countries of former Yugoslavia, and as soon as the Church emerged from the underground, he traveled to the Donetsk region.

On the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1989 in a small house which served as an underground monastery of the Basilian Order, on the outskirts of Lviv he was secretly ordained a bishop by Bishop Sofron Dmyterko, John Semediy, and John Margitych.

In 1990 after the official legalization of the Ukrainian Catholic Church he received the blessing and a Papal Bull from Pope Paul II making him titular bishop of Noveny and appointing him auxiliary bishop of the Ivano-Frankivsk eparchy.

In January 1990 Bishop Sofron Dmyterko appointed him rector of the Ivano-Frankivsk Seminary, the first one to be renewed on the territory of the former Soviet Union. At first classes were conducted in various meeting halls in the city and in the Basilian monastery. Its teaching staff included professors from the pre-war era, instructors from local institutions of higher education, as well as, invited lecturers from abroad. 400 students registered in the first year; the following year the number more than doubled - 900. In 2005 the Seminary was reregistered by the Department of Religion of Ukraine as Theological-Catechetical Institute and added a Catechetical-Pedagogical Department for nuns and candidates. At that time there were about 400 nuns and candidates/

May 24 1994 Bishop Irynei Bilyk was appointed protocencillus for the Ivano-Frankivsk eparchy.

In the fall of 1994 Bishop Irynei went to further his theological studies at the Angelicum, Papal University in Rome. In 1996 he successfully defended in Italian his master dissertation on dogmatic theology.

November 19, 2000 he was installed as bishop of the newly-formed by the Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and blessed by His Holiness Pope John II, Buchach eparchy. He continues to serve and build that eparchy spiritually for the glory of God and the salvation of the souls entrusted to him.

In July 2007, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him a Canon of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major's.

Additionally (English): http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bbilyk.html