Ivan Ziatyk

Blessed Ivan Ziatyk (Zyatyk) (1899–1952) was a member of the Redemptorists (Congregation of the Holy Redeemer) a religious congregation in the Latin Rite branch of the Catholic Church and is considered a martyr by the Church.

Ziatyk was born on the day after Christmas 1899, in the hamlet of Odrekhova near Sanok in southeastern Poland. He was the younger of two sons born to Maria and Stefan Ziatyk, his older sibling being called Mykhailo. The family were Ukrainian Rite Catholics. Stefan Ziatyk died when Ivan was 14 years of age.

In his late teenage years, Ziatyk decided to follow his calling from God and prepare for the Catholic priesthood. He entered the Ukrainian Catholic seminary in Przemyśl where he spent time studying Christian spirituality, philosophy, theology together with the history and Liturgy of the Ukrainian Rite Catholic Church. He was ordained to the diaconate and then priesthood in 1923. In 1925, Father Ivan returned to the seminary where he lectured in dogmatic theology as well as serving as spiritual director for the next ten years.

For some time Father Ivan had desired to live a more austere life and, in 1935, made the decision to join the Redemptorists. Although he was an ordained priest, he was required to spend a year in the novitiate which was located near Lviv in western Ukraine, making his first profession in August 1936. During his first year as a Redemptorist, Father Ivan lived in the monastery dedicated to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Ivano-Frankivsk (then called Stanislaviv) before moving to another monastery in Lviv, where he was both assistant superior and treasurer. Then, in 1938, he was appointed to teach dogmatic theology at the newly opened seminary in Holosko on the outskirts of present-day Lviv. In 1941, Father Ivan was made superior of the monastery dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God in Ternopil where he served before taking up the same position at Zboiska () in 1944. As well as being superior at Zboiska, he was engaged in the education of teenage boys interested in becoming Redemptorists.

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