The Landmarks
A COMMUNITY HISTORY IN FOUR BUILDINGS.
St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church: The Heart of the Diaspora ADDRESS: 30 East 7th Street • COMPLETED: 1978
For almost as long as there has been a Ukrainian community in New York, St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church on East 7th Street has been its heart. It’s where hundreds gathered for a special prayer service in 1986 after news of the Chernobyl disaster reached the United States. And since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s where crowds of parishioners have been flocking—some of them old-timers from the neighborhood, others suburban expats, all looking for a little solace. “The church has always been strong,” says the Reverend Peter Shyshka, a lifelong East Villager and now St. George’s senior priest. “Our job is to preach hope.”
The roots of the church go back a lot further than the ornate, domed structure just off Cooper Triangle. St. George’s denomination, Ukrainian Greek Catholicism, was formalized in the 16th century when much of modern Ukraine was under the sovereignty of Catholic Poland. The Church began as a bid to herd Orthodox Christians back into the papal fold: In full communion with Rome but preserving the Eastern Rite and the Ukrainian language, the Church’s peculiar Ukrainianness has made it a frequent target for suppression. In the Soviet era, authorities shuttered Greek Catholic parishes all over Ukraine, driving the faith underground. The number of adherents immigrating to the United States swelled as a result. In 1990, as many as 158,000 churchgoing Ukrainian Greek Catholics lived in the U.S.
St. George was established in 1905, its services held in the now-demolished Seventh Street Methodist Episcopal Church for decades, but the current church was completed in 1978. Designed by Apollinaire Osadca, a Ukrainian émigré, it is meant to evoke what was the mother church of Ukrainian Greek Catholicism, St. George Cathedral in Lviv, though on a much smaller scale. Considered solely on its architectural merits, the building may fall a couple of pysanky short of an Easter basket—just a little too flat in detail and poky in form to pass for the genuine article. The interior is a different matter. Ugo Mazzei, an ecclesiastic artisan based in Pietrasanta, Italy, created the elaborate mosaics that now adorn the apse. The saints Cyril and Methodius stare out, their oversize eyes and elongated figures looking undeniably Byzantine.
In the soft light of the nave, with the image of Christ Pantocrator in the dome overhead, the congregation—currently numbering about 5,000—now gathers for weekday and weekend masses. Since the invasion, the church has been open from sunup to sundown for prayers; one morning last week, Father Shyshka performed four straight hours of confession. Weekend services have been attracting the kind of turnout usually reserved for holidays, and on a recent Friday, easily a hundred attendees showed up for evening mass. It was Lenten Week, when part of the liturgy calls for the congregation to prostrate themselves: Men and women, the elderly and small children, all face forward on the aisle floors.
Oksana Ivasiv, 71, has been a parishioner since she arrived in New York from Lviv in 1995; 20 years later, she succeeded her father as the church’s custodian, replacing fading flowers with fresh, trimming the liturgical candles, and generally keeping house. “I feel so good when nobody is there but me,” she says. “All those holy faces around me and the light from the stained glass. That is the most beautiful time.”