VOLYN ORTHODOX MONASTICISM AS A SOURCE OF REPLENISHMENT OF THE NEO-UNION CLERGY

The article deals with the little-studied problem of conversion among the Volyn Orthodox monastics, who became clergy of the Neo-Union Church in the 1920s and 1930s. The Volyn Voivodeship became the region of the most significant spread of Neo-Union (Union of the Eastern Rite) in Poland, which was the embodiment of the new Vatican project of joining the church of the eastern lands. Its basis was the preservation of the Orthodox liturgical rite under the jurisdiction of the Vatican. At the initial stage of the development of the Neo-Union in Volyn, its organizers relied onthe so-called "flights," as the people called clergymen, who changed the Orthodox faith to the Uniate faith. Special hopes were placed on monasticism, which was seen as a kind of vanguard of neo-Union in Poland. In the spring of 1926, the Catholic bishop of Lutsk, Adolf Shelonzek, planned to form a monastery of the Eastern rite in the village of Zahoriv Horokhiv district. However, as it turned out, there were quite a few representatives of monasticism in Volyn who dared to take the path of conversion. They were enough only to serve a few parishes and were not enough to open at least one monastic center in the voivodeship. Our research collected biographical data about these persons, among whom the inhabitants of the Miletsky Monastery and the monks of the Pochaiv Lavra predominated. The reasons for the apostasy of the "flights," which were caused by conflicts with the Orthodox spiritual authorities, removal from church service for immoral behavior, and material benefit, were traced. Special attention was paid to the activity of "flights" in the new denomination because almost every one of them changed several parishes in Volyn. The article shows the tragic fate of these clergymen, some of whom became victims of Ukrainian-Polish confrontations during the Second World War or Soviet post-war repressions.