Mykola Bychok CSR, the youngest cardinal in the world with only 45 years, celebrated on May 3 the 20th anniversary of his priestly ordination in 2005, when he was only 25 years old. The purple, which now serves in Australia, is also the youngest cardinal who will be in the conclave to choose the successor of San Pedro.
In a congratulation letter for the anniversary, the leader of the Ukrainian Greco-Católic He writes to him: “We greatly appreciate your efforts to support the victims of the brutal war in Ukraine. In your person, the continents come together to save people.”
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“Asking the Lord to continue guiding you, we express our most sincere gratitude and our recognition and praise,” he adds.
Mykola Bychok biography, the youngest cardinal in the world
Bychok was born on February 13, 1980 in Ternopil, Ukraine. He made his first votes with the redemptive priests in August 1998. On August 17, 2003 he cast his perpetual votes, according to the website of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Australia.
He was ordained a priest by the redemptive bishop Ihor Wozniak, CSR on May 3, 2005 in the city of Lviv.
Between 2005 and 2007 it served as a missionary in the parish of the mother of God of Perpetual Socorro in Siberia (Russia) in the city of Prokopyevsk. Years later he was Vicar of the Ukrainian Catholic Parish of San Juan Bautista in Newark, New Jersey (United States).
On January 15, 2020, Pope Francis appointed him Eparquial Bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparquía of the Saints Pedro and Pablo de Melbourne for Ukrainian Catholics in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania.
On December 7, 2024, Cardinal was created by Pope Francis, along with 20 other purpurated.
Eastern rites in the Catholic Church and the Ukrainian rite
He website Of the Ukrainian Catholics in Australia explains that “the Ukrainian Catholic Church (UCC) is an oriental Catholic Church in full communion with the Apostolic Headquarters.”
“With more than 5.5 million faithful, it is the largest of the twenty -three eastern churches of the World Catholic community, the second in number after the Latin Church (Roman Catholic). The UCC is directed by the major archbishop of kyiv and Halych, its beatitude Sviatoslav (Shevchuk).”
Cardinal Mykola Bychok’s clothing is different from that of other cardinals because of their belonging to this rite. The rite to which the majority of Catholics belong in the western world is Latin.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.