Vavryk, Mykhailo

Vavryk, Mykhailo or Wawryk [Ваврик, Михайло], b 16 December 1908 in Laskivtsi, Terebovlia county, Galicia, d 1 March 1984 in Hawthorne, New York State, USA. Basilian priest and scholar; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1961. He completed his term in the novitiate at the Krekhiv Monastery and studied at the Pontifical Oriental Institute (1934–7) and the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology (1937–9) in Rome. He served as vice-rector of Saint Josaphat's Ukrainian Pontifical College (1938–48), director of the Ukrainian program on Vatican Radio (1939–42), and a chaplain for the interned members of the Division Galizien after the Second World War. In 1948–60 he taught theology and did missionary work in North America. He then returned to Rome to become chaplain of Saint Josaphat’s College and then general consultor of the Basilian monastic order (1963–76). Vavryk was a specialist on the history of the Ukrainian church (see also Historiography of the Ukrainian church) and of the Basilian monastic order. His publications include Po vasyliians'kykh monastyriakh (Basilian Monasteries, 1958); Narys rozvytku i stanu vasyliians'koho chynu XVII–XX st. (A Survey of the Development and Status of the Basilian Order of the 17th–20th Centuries, 1979); and articles in Analecta Ordinis S. Basilii Magni/Zapysky ChSVV (which he also helped edit), the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, and elsewhere.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]