I am ready to die, but I cannot be quiet in the face of such injustice." On the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, 15 August 1940, he gave a homily which reportedly drew some ten thousand faithful. Arrest and death On 20 December 1940, the Soviet secret police took Kovalyk from his monastery on account of the sermon he had preached on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (8 December). He was accused of being a spy. For the six months of his incarceration at Brygidki prison, like many others, he was subjected to interrogation and torture. In prison, he continued his ministry by praying with the other prisoners, hearing confessions, giving spiritual exercises, teaching catechism classes, and comforting them with religious tales and stories from the Bible. On 22 June 1941, German troops began their offensive against the Soviet Union and the city of Lviv fell seven days later. As the German army advanced, the Soviets guards executed 7,000 prisoners prior to retreat. Witnesses claim that, rather than simply shooting Kovalyk, he was crucified on a corridor wall of the prison, his stomach ripped open and a dead human foetus inserted. Official Soviet statements claim that Kovalyk was shot and not crucified. On 24 April 2001, along with several other Redemptorists, Kovalyk was recognised by the Holy See as being a martyr. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 27 June 2001 during that pope's pastoral visit to Ukraine. June 27 is the feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the patroness of the Redemptorists. Legacy In his memoirs, Yaroslav Levytskyi recounts Kovalyk's sermons and the risk they invoked. '[His] sermons made an incredible impression on his listeners. But in the prevailing system of denunciations and terror this was very dangerous for a preacher. So I often tried to convince Father Kovalyk... that [he] needed to be more careful about the content of his sermons, that he shouldn't provoke the Bolsheviks, because here was a question of his own safety. But it was all in vain. Fathey Kovalyk only had one answer:"If that is god's will, I will gladly accept death, but as a preacher I will never act against my conscience."' References Other sources Biographies of twenty five Greek-Catholic Servants of God at the website of the Vatican Beatification of the Servants of God on June 27, 2001 at the website of