A Portrait of Kyr Josyf Slipyj as a man of faith and a confessor of the Catholic faith. The title of Confessor is reserved for men who suffer for the Christian Faith but survive the tortures of those that persecute them. Among the most important of these men are St Maximus and now Kyr Josyf. A man born in the region of Galicia that saw not only arguments against Roman Catholics but also suffered persecution and slander from the Basilians, Roman Catholics, the Nazis, the Communists, and his fellow Byzantine metropolitans most famously the Metropolitan of Philadelphia, Met. Senyshyn. Pelikan presents the struggles that Kyr Josyf had early on from his appointment to the seminary, to his years in the Gulags on which he refused multiple times to become a KGB Ukrainian Orthodox agent and bishop.
My thoughts on Confessor Between East and West:
Kyr Josyf was a wonderful man and a modern Saint. In him, we can see the balance of Byzantine Spirituality as well as Thomism. His life shows the path of a modern St Francis of Assisi, a man that the Lord calls forward to reform and be a pillar of the Church. Pelikan like in all his works exceeds and writes a wonderful biography that every Christian, Catholic or not, should read.
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