The Immaculate Conception in Chortkiv, a church that recalls the horror of communism

Every December 8, Spain celebrates the day of its patron saint, the Immaculate Conception, a dogma proclaimed by the Catholic Church in 1854.

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A place in Ukraine where the Immaculate Conception is also celebrated

This dogma was defended for centuries by Spain, which is why this is certainly the most Spanish of all the holidays celebrated in the Catholic calendar. However, the day of the Immaculate Conception is also celebrated in other countries, including Ukraine, where there is a significant Greek-Catholic community, especially in the western part of the country. There, in western Ukraine, there is a small town called Chortkiv, which had about 28,000 inhabitants at the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.

This Sunday, this Ukrainian city is one of the places in the world where this feast is celebrated. There is a Catholic temple there called the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which depends on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a particular church that is part of the Catholic Church and that performs its liturgy according to the Byzantine rite. This church in Chortkiv has a curious history that dates back precisely to 1854, the year in which the Catholic Church proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

A convent that suffered the terrible history of that city

In 1854, a convent of the Sisters of Mercy was founded in Chortkiv, with the money of a Polish nobleman, Heronim Sadovskyi. It should be noted that until the first partition of Poland in 1772, Chortkiv had been part of that kingdom (the town was then called Czortków), so there was a significant Polish community there. At the time of the founding of the monastery, Chortkiv was part of the region of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Like the rest of Poland and later Ukraine, the convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Chortkiv had a terrible history. During the First World War the city was occupied by the Russian Empire and later retaken by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the end of the war, Chortkiv became part of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, until it was taken by the Russian Bolsheviks. These turbulent times seemed to come to an end when in September 1920, Chortkiv returned to Polish hands, regaining the name of Czortków. However, the worst tragedy was yet to come.

In 1939, following the German-Soviet invasion of Poland, Chortkiv came under the dictatorship of Stalin, who unleashed brutal repression in the city, killing hundreds of people. On 7 July 1941, the city was again occupied when the Germans took possession of it, initiating another brutal repression: 6,800 Jews from Chortkiv were confined in a ghetto built in the city. In June 1943, almost all the survivors were massacred by the Nazis.

Since 1944 it was used as a detention center by the bloodthirsty Soviet NKVD.

On March 23, 1944, Chortkiv began a new episode of its Calvary with the arrival of the Red Army, unleashing a new wave of repression. Until then, the center of the Sisters of Mercy had managed to remain open, but finally, in 1944, the NKVD, Stalin's brutal political police, set up a detention, torture and execution center in the convent. One of those who passed through there was the Ukrainian Greek Catholic martyr Vasyl Velychkovsky, who spent long periods in prison under the Soviet dictatorship, being named bishop in 1963 and dying in 1973 due to injuries sustained during his captivity. Pope Saint John Paul II beatified him in 2001.

The return of freedom to the city of Chortkiv

It seemed that the communist nightmare of Chortkiv would never end. In the city, the Soviet dictatorship erected a statue of Lenin, as a reminder of Moscow's domination over the Ukrainian town. However, no evil lasts forever. In 1973, Ukrainian patriots waved blue and yellow flags in the city. It was a preview of the great wind of freedom that was to come.

A few days after the fall of the Berlin Wall on 12 November 1989, Chortkiv, still under Soviet rule, was the scene of a huge march of 10,000 people commemorating the victims of communist repression, a march that included Pavlo Vasylyk, a Greek Catholic bishop who had experienced this repression himself. Finally, on 24 August 1991, Chortkiv became part of the new independent Ukraine, after 47 long years of Soviet rule and submission to the communist yoke of Moscow. Two days later, the statue of Lenin in Chortkiv was torn down.

Since 2006, this church has had an exhibition on communist terror

In August 1993, after decades as a military centre for the Red Army, the former convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Chortkiv was returned to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and entrusted to Father Grigori Kanak. The religious centre had witnessed the horrors of the Soviet dictatorship and still remembers it today, as its basement now houses an exhibition dedicated to communist repression and to those who suffered torture and death at the hands of the NKVD, an exhibition that opened in 2006.

The current Church of the Immaculate Conception, a neo-Gothic temple, built with yellow brick and located in the former convent, is a reminder not to lose hope in terrible times like those that Ukraine is now experiencing under the Russian invasion. In front of the temple there is a statue dedicated to Christ, which is in a walking position, as if guiding the country's steps. For the moment, this church resists despite the wave of Russian attacks on temples, which has left dozens of churches destroyed throughout the country. Hopefully Ukraine's victory in this war can soon be celebrated there.

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Main photo: Posterrr / Rest of the photos: Zabytki.in.ua.