Lencyk, Wasyl

Lencyk, Wasyl [Ленцик, Василь; Lencyk, Vasyl'], b 17 March 1912 in Mazurivka, Zhydachiv county, Galicia, d 10 November 2002 in Stamford, Connecticut, USA. Historian, pedagogue, and Catholic activist; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1961. He studied at the Greek Catholic Theological Academy in Lviv, the Ukrainian Free University in Munich (PH D, 1947), and, after emigrating to the United States of America in 1949, Fordham University in New York (PH D, 1961). He taught at the Ukrainian Free University (1948–9), Saint Basil’s College in Stamford, Connecticut (1954–2000), and Seton Hall University (1963–72), and in 1963 he was appointed a professor of church and world history at the Ukrainian Catholic University (Rome). From 1978 he was general secretary of the Supreme Council of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and a member of its American executive. From 1964 he was director of the Ukrainian Diocesan Museum of Stamford. He was president of the Obnova Society of Ukrainian Catholic Students (1954–8) and in 1991 he received the papal medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice. He contributed to Entsyklopediia ukraïnoznavstva and to the Encyclopedia of Ukraine (church subject coeditor) and the New Catholic Encyclopedia (1979). A prolific author, his major works include The Eastern Catholic Church and Czar Nicholas I (1966) and Vyznachni postati Ukraïns'koï Tserkvy: Mytropolyt Andrei Sheptyts'kyi i Patriarkh Iosyf Slipyi (Notable Personages of the Ukrainian Church: Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and Patriarch Yosyf Slipy, 2001).

[This article was written in 2021.]