25 June 2008, 16:30
Kharkov pensioners break a memorial desk to the SS spiritual guide
Moscow, June 25, Interfax - A memorial granite desk to the "patriarch" of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) Joseph Slipyj was broken in the center of Kharkov (sic).
According to witnesses, a group of "exalted elderly" people performed the act of vandalism, the website of the Komsomolskaya Pravda Ukrainian version has reported on Wednesday.
One of the witnesses reported the accident to the police. Criminals haven't been detained yet.
The memorial desk was at the house where the "patriarch" used to stay. Earlier that building housed a transit prison.
Slipyj was a spiritual guide of the SS-Galichina division and the Nachtigal SS Galician battalion. He was arrested in 1945 and convicted to penal servitude in Siberia. Later he was convicted twice and contained in prisons of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Novosibirsk Region, and Kamchatka. He was released thanks to Vatican's interference and settled in Rome.
Slipyj died on September 7, 1984 in Rome where he was first buried. His remains were transferred to Lvov (sic) and buried in a crypt of St. Yura Cathedral in 1992 in compliance with his will. The process of Metropolitan Joseph's beatification is launched as the Catholic Church seeks to canonize him as one of its saints.
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=4850
