International interdisciplinary scientific seminar on the great son
On 24 October 2024, in the hall of the Archaeological Museum of UzhNU, with the simultaneous use of remote communication tools (using the Zoom platform), an international interdisciplinary scientific seminar dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Bishop Dionysius Nyadi of Carpathian Ukraine was held on the topic: ‘Pastoral and educational missions of Bishop Dionysius Nyadi against the background of historical and cultural circumstances and challenges of the interwar period of the twentieth century.’ The initiator and main co-organiser of the event was the Mykhailo Molnar Research Institute of Ukrainian Studies of UzhNU, as well as two foreign academic institutions - the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Zagreb (Croatia) and the Ukrainian Department of the University of Wroclaw (Poland).
At the beginning of the seminar, representatives of the co-organising institutions addressed the participants and guests with welcoming remarks: Acting Director of the M. Molnar Research Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Associate Professor O. Laver, Acting Deputy Dean of the Catholic Theological Faculty, Professor T. Barshchevsky, and Professor of the Ukrainian Department of the University of Wroclaw, Professor O. Beley.
Within the framework of two thematic blocks - historical and theological and philological - 10 in-depth reports were presented in Ukrainian and Croatian. In addition to the above-mentioned representatives of the co-organising institutions, the seminar was attended by representatives of the scientific and pedagogical departments of Uzhhorod National University: Assoc. A.I. Vegesh, Assoc. Prof. V.V. Sharkan (Faculty of Philology of UzhNU); and other Ukrainian and foreign scientific institutions: Assoc. Y. Boyko (Augustinianum Patristic Institute in Rome).
Bishop Dionysius Nyaradi (1874-1940)
Historical background. Dionysius Nyaradi was born on 10 October 1874 in Ruskyi Kerestur (Bacsá, Austria-Hungary). This is the area where the first diaspora of Rusyn-Ukrainians, descendants of Greek Catholic immigrants from the Przyszczawiec region and Zakarpattia, has been living since the mid-eighteenth century. Nyaradi received his theological education in Croatia. In 1902, Dionysius Nyaradi was appointed rector of the Greek Catholic Seminary in Zagreb. On 9 January 1915, Dionysius Nyaradi was ordained bishop of the Diocese of Križevac. In 1920-1927, he performed the missionary service of Bishop Administrator of the Diocese of Presov. After the state borders of the First Czechoslovak Republic were changed as a result of the Vienna Arbitration in 1938, the Vatican appointed Bishop Dionysius as administrator of the Mukachevo Diocese, based in Khust. Here, the Bishop of Carpathian Ukraine, Dionysius Nyariadi, steadfastly fulfilled his pastoral ministry until 16 March 1939, when Hungarian troops completely occupied the newly proclaimed Ukrainian state. It was only thanks to the support of the nuncio of the Apostolic Capital in Budapest that Bishop Dionysius managed to escape from Hungarian prison. Upon returning to his small homeland, Nyaradi continued his ministry in the diocese of Kryzevac. Bishop Dionysius died on 14 May 1940 under mysterious circumstances during a visit to Mrzlomo Polje (Croatia). He was buried in his native Ruskyi Kerestur (now Serbia). The abstracts presented at the seminar clearly and convincingly supported the thesis that the figure of Bishop Dionysius Nyaradi of the Diocese of Kryzewak, who is so little known to contemporary Ukrainian humanities and whose activities took place during epochal events in the history of twentieth-century Central and South-Central Europe, undoubtedly deserves further in-depth attention and comprehensive understanding from the standpoint of various scientific disciplines. Based on archival materials of church institutions and a number of extremely valuable egodocuments from the period of Dionysius Nyaradi's episcopal ministry, the reports of the seminar participants made it possible to outline the scale and depth of the bishop's achievements. In particular, the report of the Zagreb scholar and church historian prof. Daniel Patafta, a Zagreb scholar and church historian, testified to the outstanding achievements of Bishop Njaradi in the exercise of his episcopal care for the faithful of Croats, Macedonians and other peoples of the Greek Catholic faith within the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, The best confirmation of this was the extremely high assessment of Bishop Njaradi's work from the pen of the then Archbishop of Zagreb, Primate of the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia - now declared blessed - Alojz Stepinac.
Similarly, the research of other historians and philologists present at the seminar (Ihor Likhtei, Volodymyr Moroz, Justin Boyko, Mykhailo Mykhalets, Natalia Rebryk, and Oleh Beley), based on historical materials, confirmed the titanic contribution to the development and strengthening of church institutions for the faithful of the Ukrainian people, both in their native lands of the Czechoslovak Republic, and in the settlements within the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) - as an indisputable fact of Bishop Dionysius Nyadi's uncompromising and selfless service to the Church of Christ and his native people. Accordingly, the reports of philologists Anastasia Vehesh, Oksana Laver, and Vasyl Sharkan argumentatively outlined the contours of the prospects for deepening research on cultural texts of Zakarpattia in the interwar period of the twentieth century in the context of the confrontation between the national and regional, while exposing and giving due assessment to the pseudo-scientific discourse aimed at disintegrating the Ukrainian ethno-cultural and religious spaces.
The participants of the seminar are convinced that the issues presented in the reports will undoubtedly serve to fill an unfair gap not only in Ukrainian studies, but also in the history of the Greek Catholic Church in Central and South-Eastern Europe, and will make it possible to better outline the vectors and next steps of research work on the creative heritage of Bishop Dionysius Nyaradi not only in the perspective of the interwar period of the twentieth century, but also in the vision of the influence of the Bishop of Carpathian Ukraine on the further course of the history of his native communities of the Kryzevac, Prešov and Mukachevo Greek Catholic dioceses in the pan-European and pan-Ukrainian contexts.
Based on the results of the seminar, it is planned to publish a peer-reviewed collection of materials (a collective monograph) in a renowned scientific publishing house.
The organisers of the seminar express their sincere gratitude for the provision of the conference hall and technical support to the Dean of the Faculty of History and International Relations, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor Vitalii Ivanovych Andriiiko, the Head of the Archaeological Museum Volodymyr Valeriiovych Moizhesov, and the lecturer-guide Maria Anatoliivna Zhylenko.
