Seventy-Five Years Ago: The Blessed Hieromartyr Nicholas, Exarch of Volyn, Pidlissia, and Polissia, Visits Dublin for the Eucharistic Congress Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the Catholic Church has been holding international Eucharistic Congresses every few years when possible. Such a Eucharist Congress involves the participation of the Eastern Churches.
The Dublin Eucharistic Congress of 1932 was a milestone in the development of an independent Ireland; participants came from all over the world, despite the Great Depression. Blessed Nicholas, ordained Bishop in 1931, was the first Redemptorist monk to become a Greek-Catholic Bishop, so the Redemptorist Father General Patrick Murray arranged for Blessed Nicholas to come to Ireland for the Eucharistic Congress.
Blessed Nicholas lodged in the guest-house of the Redemptoristine Nuns on Iona Road, serving Divine Liturgy in their beautiful Church of Saint Alphonsus. But the main Pontifical Divine Liturgy of the Eucharistic Congress was in the Jesuit Church on Gardiner Street: Bishop Nicholas, Bishop Peter (Buchys) and another bishop served, with many priests and an outstanding Protodeacon. The choir was formed by Jesuit students from Clongowes, directed by Paul Mailleux (later the Rector of the Pontifical Russian College in Rome); the service was in Church-Slavonic. The large church was filled beyond capacity; among those present was Father (later Archbishop) Fulton J. Sheen from the USA, who remained strongly attracted to the Eastern Churches and often served the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom.
An icon-screen was constructed and furnished with hand-painted icons for this service; efforts to locate that icon-screen have failed, probably it was given to Blessed Nicholas and sent to Poland for one of his churches (and later destroyed either by the Naczis or by the Soviets). Bishop Nicholas remained in Ireland for about a month, visiting Redemptorist churches in several cities and Redemptorist houses of formation. In after years, he remembered and spoke of his visit here.
Strangely, though, both the Ukrainian Redemptorists and the Latin Redemptorists seem to have forgotten the visit of Blessed Nicholas to Ireland. This only came to light through some research into the Dublin Eucharistic Congress of 1932 a few years ago; in old books and newspapers of the period, photographs were unearthed and so were descriptions – an Irish family in Roscommon remembers the visit well because their mother knew Bishop Nicholas and for decades thereafter she and her family remembered him in their daily prayers.
During World War II the Naczis would not permit Bishop Nicholas to visit his parishes; in April 1945 the Soviet government arrested and imprisoned him. In 1958 he died from this abuse and ill-treatment. In 2001 Pope John Paul II beatified Bishop Nicholas as the head of the New Martyrs of Ukraine. Immediately parishioners and friends of our congregation in Dublin offered to defray the cost of a beautiful hand-painted traditional Icon to remember the visit of Blessed Nicholas to Ireland. Patriarch Gregory III of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and All the East consecrated the Icon for us when he served the Patriarchal Divine Liturgy in the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin on 8 September 2002, the Seventieth Anniversary of Blessed Nicholas's visit and the Eucharistic Congress. The Icon is now the patronal icon of our congregation.
