Andrey Sheptytsky, OSBM (; ; 29 July 1865 – 1 November 1944) served as the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from 1901 until his death in 1944. His tenure in office spanned two world wars and seven political regimes: Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Soviet, General Government (Nazi), and again Soviet. According to the church historian Jaroslav Pelikan, "Arguably, Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky was the most influential figure ...in the entire history of the Ukrainian Church in the twentieth century". The Lviv National Museum, founded by Sheptytsky in 1905, now bears his name. The Information-Resource Center of the Ukrainian Catholic University that was opened in September 2017 also bears his name The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Center. Life He was born as Count Roman Aleksander Maria Szeptycki in a village 40 km west/northwest of Lviv called Prylbychi, in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then a crownland of the Austrian Empire. The Sheptytsky family descends from the Ruthenian nobility, but in the 18th century had become Polish-speaking and Roman Catholic. The maternal Fredro family descends from the Polish nobility. Among his ancestors, there were many important church figures, including two metropolitans of Kyiv, Atanasy and Lev. His maternal grandfather was the Polish writer Aleksander Fredro. One of his brothers, Klymentiy Sheptytsky, M.S.U., became a Studite monk, and another, Stanisław Szeptycki, became a General in the Polish Army. He was 2 m 10 cm (6 ft. 10 in.) tall. Sheptytsky received his education first at home and then in Kraków. After graduating he went to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army but after a few months he fell sick and was forced to abandon it. Instead, he studied law in Kraków and Breslau, receiving his doctorate in 1888. During his studies he visited Italy, where he was granted an audience with Pope Leo XIII at the Vatican, and to the Ukrainian heartland of Kyiv, then under Russian rule, where he met some of the most prominent Ukrainian personalities of that time. He also visited Moscow. Religious life Despite his father's opposition, Sheptytsky became a monk at the Basilian monastery in Dobromyl,(1888) returning to his roots to serve what was regarded as the peasant Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. He took the name, Andrew, after the younger brother of Saint Peter, Andrew the Apostle, considered the founder of the Byzantine Church and also specifically of the Ukrainian Church. He then studied at the Jesuit