Omelyan Kovch

Who was Omelyan Kovch?

Blessed Оmelyan Kovch was a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic priest murdered in Majdanek concentration camp.

He was born in a peasant family in the town of Tlumach in the Kosiv region of Western Ukraine, and was ordained in 1911 after graduating from the Sts. Sergius and Bacchus College in Rome. He served as a parish priest from 1921 to 1943 at the church of St. Nicholas in the village of Peremyshliany, and was the father of six children.

In the spring of 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo for harboring Jews, specifically for providing Jews with more than 600 baptismal certificates. On March 25, 1944 he was gassed at Majdanek concentration camp near Lublin, Poland.

On September 9, 1999, the Jewish Council of Ukraine awarded him the title of "Ukraine's righteous".

His beatification took place on July 27, 2001 in Lviv, during the Byzantine rite liturgy conducted by Pope John Paul II.