Your Holiness,

Please, receive an assurance of our love and obedience to You and to the whole Catholic Church. We are Greek-Catholic monks of the Basilian Order of St. Josaphat (OSBM), who without any court treatment, without any evidence of guilt and without observation of the legal procedure were falsely accused of an imaginary disobedience and of various similarly constructed transgressions, and excluded from the Order – 29 monks altogethter. Twenty of us lived in the Czech Republic (CR), in the OSBM Delegature of St. Prokop, which without any reason given was abolished, and nine lived in the monastery in Pidhirci (Ukraine) where we carried out a mission and recollection which affected ten-thousands of people (intelligence, priests, religious). This provoked envy with our fellow brothers. When we turned to the Congregation for the Oriental Churches with a request for help, it ignored all our requests. And not only this, the Congregation even internally united with our General Superior – who managed to influence even Cardinal L. Huzar and Apostolic Nuncio in Ukraine – and without any trial or confrontation it approved the decrees of our exclusion from the Order, though it was evident that they were not valid because of not having observed the CCEO. Moreover, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches together with the Apostolic Nuncio in Ukraine consciously conceal and keep silent to the fact that OSBM leadership connected with Cardinal L. Huzar turned to the state authorities of Ukraine (including SBU (note: State Security Service of Ukraine) – the former KGB) “with an order” – a request – for deportation of and prohibition of entrance to Ukraine to those monks of the abolished Czech Delegature who are not citizens of Ukraine. These are 23 citizens of the Czech and Slovak Republics. The first who showed us the decree of the abolishment of the Czech OSBM Delegature of St. Prokop, was not the OSBM leadership but the Ukrainian state authorities to whom the OSBM leadership had passed the list of all members of the abolished Delegature together with their personal data, they accused us of disobedience and demanded our deportation! Up to this day four of us have already been deported with a three-year prohibiton of entrance to Ukraine. The issue is discussed in the journal “Patriarchat” (№ 3 and 4/05, p.25). The innermmost reason why some Church superiors are blackening us, why we were excluded from the OSBM and why the OSBM Delegature of St. Prokop in CR was abolished, is our way of life in accordance with the Gospel as well as all that we preach – sound principles of Christian faith. All that we teach and how we live we have described in the book “Four Words from Ukraine”, which is translated into English, German and Czech – see www.community.org.ua. We are also sending You a microdisk with the book, and we are asking You most kindly to read it and give Your blessing to it.

We ask You for help. We want to live as monks even further in a monastery of Papal law and be members of the Catholic Church from where they want to exclude us by intrigues. Bishop Michael Koltun (Eparchy of Sokal) stood up for us; however, they put pressure even on him. Also Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk stood up for us, received us as a ‘sui iuris’ monastery and gave us a decree; however, he died soon after.

We are asking for an impartial judge who would see through all our documents and who would meet us personally. All documents needed have been sent to the Congregation for the Oriental Churches and to the Apostolic Signature.