SHEPTYTSKYJ, ANDREY. - Metropolitan of Galicia, in the world Roman Alexander, third son of the counts de Szeptyci-Szeptyckyj, an ancient noble Ukrainian family, b. at Prylbyci on 29 July 1865, d. on 1 Nov. 1944. After completing his legal studies at Breslau, crowned by a degree in jurisprudence, he embraced the Basilian Order on 23 May 1888, changing his name to Andrew.
Eleven years later, on 17 June 1899, S. was appointed by a bull of Pope Leo XIII bishop of Stanislaopoli in Galicia (Halicia). After the death of Julian Kuilovskyj, metropolitan of Lviv, he was elevated by the same Pope to the dignity of metropolitan and Halician archbishop of Lviv on 16 Jan. 1901; he exercised this office for 45 years, developing with great zeal his pastoral and apostolic activity, personally visiting his vast diocese, preaching, hearing confessions and instructing clergy and people. He also wrote more than 150 pastoral letters on various themes concerning the religious, social and national life of his faithful. He did not neglect either the solicitous care of school youth, orphans, the sick and the poor, erecting for this purpose boarding schools, institutes, orphanages and hospitals. A promoter of ecclesiastical studies, he erected and built the minor and major Seminaries for the formation and education of the clergy, first at Stanislaopoli and then at Lviv, where he founded the Seminary and the Ecclesiastical Academy; he always promoted theological studies and scholarly publications. Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Orientales omnes of 13 Dec. 1945 wove a flattering judgment of him. He translated into Ukrainian the Opera ascetica of St. Basil the Great (Lviv 1929) and published the very interesting booklet De sapientia Dei (ibid. 1932).
His zeal was not limited only to the administration of the archdiocese, but embraced also those of his faithful who, because of grave social conditions, were forced to emigrate overseas to North and South America. The metropolitan personally visited these destitute people, sent priests, and for his great zeal he deserved to obtain from the Apostolic See the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the United States of America (1907) and in Canada (1912). Having embraced the monastic state, Msgr. S., even though he was metropolitan, nonetheless remained an exemplary religious and a promoter of monastic life.
Beginning with the restoration of the nuns of St. Basil the Great, he renewed the ancient Eastern monasticism according to the Rule of St. Theodore Studite (1901-1902). Then, while visiting his faithful in Canada on the occasion of the Eucharistic Congress of 1910-11, he found some Redemptorists who, having obtained the faculty from the Holy See, were devoting themselves to the pastoral care of the faithful of the Byzantine-Slavic rite. He then concluded an agreement with the Father General of the Redemptorists (1913), later confirmed by the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide on 27 Apr. 1914, by virtue of which the Redemptorists created a branch of the Congregation in the Byzantine-Slavic rite. Today this branch has already become a province in Galicia, unfortunately now suppressed by the Bolsheviks; another flourishing vice-province exists in Canada and in the United States of America.
But the noblest purpose, which dominated the whole activity of the metropolitan, was his desire to promote the union of the dissidents with the Roman Holy See, and he let no occasion slip by which he might realize it. To this end he visited the Latin bishops and the religious Orders, discussing difficult problems of the Union and encouraging them to collaborate, often took part in unionistic congresses, undertook journeys to Moscow (1907), favored relations with the most important dissident ecclesiastical and civil personages. This allowed the metropolitan, freed from imprisonment in 1917 after the revolution in Russia, to be able to hold a provincial Synod of Catholics with priests already known and to obtain the appointment of the exarch for Russia in the person of Leonid Fedorov (cf. A. Herman, De fontibus iuris ecclesiastici Russorum, Rome 1936, p. 96 ff.). Because of this zealous activity of his in promoting unionistic action in 1914, after the occupation of Galicia by the Russian troops, he was taken "prisoner of the Tsar" and then incarcerated in the monastery of Suzdal for more than two years. The Russian revolution of 1917 freed the metropolitan from prison. In Sept. of the same year he returned to his homeland, devastated and destroyed by the great battles that had taken place in eastern Galicia. As soon as the burned churches had been rebuilt in the laborious years 1918-39, the ecclesiastical institutes that had been destroyed and plundered renewed, the minor and major Seminaries organized, studies restored, the second world war came, during which the metropolitan, when his ecclesiastical province was occupied, consecrated his last efforts to defending his flock and wrote pastoral letters encouraging priests and faithful to resistance and perseverance in the Catholic faith; on 2 May 1940 he celebrated a diocesan Synod at Lviv.