Blessed Fr. Oleksa Zarytsky, Greek Catholic Martyr

“Blessed Fr. Oleksa Zarytsky was born in 1912 in the village of Biche, in the Lviv Region. In 1931, he entered the seminary in Lviv. He received his ordination to the priesthood from Metropolitan Andrei Sheptyts’kyi in 1936. In 1948, he was imprisoned for ten years and deported to Karaganda. After his early release in 1957, he was named Apostolic Administrator of Kazakhstan and Siberia, but was shortly thereafter imprisoned again for a three-year term. He died as a martyr for the faith on 30 October 1963 in the Dolynka concentration camp near Karaganda.”