Nicholas Charnetsky

Blessed Nicholas Charnetsky
Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky
Bishop and Martyr
Born	1884 Semakivtsi, Horodenka district, Ukraine
Died	1959 Ukraine
Venerated in	Catholic Church
Beatified	27 June 2001, Ukraine by Pope John Paul II

Blessed Nicholas (Ukrainian: Mykolay) Charnetsky (1884–1959) was a member of the Redemptorists (Congregation of the Holy Redeemer), a religious congregation in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church; he is considered a martyr by the Church.

Mykolay Charnetsky was born in the village of Semakivtsia hamlet in the Horodenka district in western Ukraine, on 14 December 1884. He came from a large family and was the eldest of nine children. Alexander and Parasceva Charnetsky and their children were devout members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church which is in communion with the Bishop of Rome and is distinct from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

From a young age, Mykolay had expressed a desire to become a priest and when he was 18 years of age, the Ukrainian Catholic Bishop Hryhory Khomyshyn (who was himself to be martryed) sent him to study at the Ukrainian College in Rome. After his ordination to the Catholic priesthood in 1909, Father Mykolay returned from Ukraine to Rome so that he might complete a Doctorate in Theology, which he did the following year.

Upon completion of his doctorate, Father Mykolay returned to his homeland in order to teach Dogmatic theology and philosophy at the Ukrainian Catholic seminary in Ivano-Frankivsk (then called Stanislaviv) where he remained for the next nine years, also serving as spiritual director to any student who wished.

For some time, Father Mykolay had desired to live a more austere life than that of a seminary professor. In 1913 the Belgian province of the Redemptorists had established a mission in Ukraine and this included a novitiate near Lviv for those interested in joining the congregation. Like Father Ivan Ziatyk who was to follow him some years later, Father Mykolay entered the novitiate in 1919.