Laba, Vasyl

Laba, Vasyl or Basil [Лаба, Василь], b 1 September 1887 in Berteshiv, Bibrka county, Galicia, d 10 November 1976 in Edmonton, Alberta. Priest and theologian; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1947. After being educated at Lviv University and the universities of Innsbruck, Fribourg, and Vienna (D TH, 1914), Laba was ordained in 1912 and served as field chaplain in the Austrian army during the First World War (1914–18), chief chaplain in the Ukrainian Galician Army, and acting vicar-general of the Ukrainian Catholic archeparchy of Lviv in Kamianets-Podilskyi (1919–20). In the interwar period he taught at a Lviv gymnasium, at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv (from 1926) and at the Greek Catholic Theological Academy (from 1930). He wrote a monograph on biblical hermeneutics (1928) and a three-volume survey of patristics (1930–2). During the Second World War he was chief chaplain in the Division Galizien. As a postwar refugee he was the first rector of the Ukrainian Catholic seminaries in Hirschberg, Germany (1945–8), and Kulemborg, Holland (1948–50). In Canada after 1950, Laba served as vicar-general of the Ukrainian Catholic eparchy of Edmonton; he was also prorector and professor at the Ukrainian Catholic University (Rome) (1963–76).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]