Blessed Basil was born in 1903.  He entered the seminary in 1920, and after his ordination to the diaconate he joined the Redemptorists.  Ordained a priest in 1925 he spent more than twenty years working as a missioner.  He was arrested on 11th April 1945 and sentenced to death, later commuted to ten years imprisonment and forced labour.  Freed in 1955 he resumed his pastoral work in secret.  In 1963 Metropolitan Joseph Slipyj ordained him a bishop.  He was again arrested in 1969 and condemned to three more years in prison.  On his release the soviet authorities would not allow him to return to Lviv.  After a brief stay in Yugoslavia he made his way to Rome, where he was received by Pope Paul VI.  In June 1972 he travelled to Canada, and there died on 30th June 1973, as a result of a slow-acting poison given him prior to his departure for Yugoslavia.

Basil Vsevolod Velychkovsky was born on 1st June 1903 in Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk).  Basil’s father was the village parish priest and his mother was the daughter of a priest.

Basil received his secondary education in the town of Horodentsi.  Being an ardent patriot, the fifteen-year-old gymnasium student joined the Ukrainian Galician Army to fight for the independence of his motherland during World War I.  After his safe return from the army in 1920, Basil entered the Lviv seminary.  In 1924 he was ordained a deacon.  It was at that time that Velychkovsky discovered his vocation to the religious life.  He joined the Redemptorist novitiate and a year later, on 29th August 1925, he professed the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.  Since Velychkovsky had already completed his theological studies, he was ordained a priest immediately after completing the novitiate, on the 9th October of the same year.

From the very beginning of Fr. Velychkovsky's religious life, his superiors noticed his talent as a missionary.  In order to develop this talent, Fr. Velychkovsky spent two years teaching at the Redemptorist "Juvenate" or minor seminary.  He was also sent to Stanislaviv to conduct missions together with his more experienced confreres.  This was the beginning of Fr. Velychkovsky’s apostolic work, which lasted for 20 years - until the beginning of the persecution of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

On 16th November 1928 Fr. Velychkovsky arrived at the Redemptorist monastery in Kovel.  There, he immediately became involved in missionary work among the Galician settlers, scattered throughout the Volyn, Pidliashshia, Kholm and Polissia regions, who had departed from the Greek-Catholic Church and joined the Russian Orthodox Church.  Along with this work among the Galician settlers, Fr. Velychkovsky also organized missions for the local population of Volyn, Polissia, and Belarus.  Using financial support from Metropolitan Sheptytsky and other sponsors, he founded several churches and chapels.  In 1935 Fr. Velychkovsky returned to the Stanislaviv monastery as superior.

Fr. Basil continued his apostolic activity on a large scale, even though the Greek Catholic Church underwent persecution at the hands of the Soviets after their occupation of Western Ukraine in 1939.  In 1940 he organized a procession in which some twenty thousand faithful participated carrying crosses through the streets of Stanislaviv.  Despite the threats from Soviet secret police, he did not give up.  In 1941, on Metropolitan Sheptytsky's request, he left for Central Ukraine to work with the Orthodox Ukrainians of Kamianets-Podilskyi.  However, the pro-Ukrainian activities of the new priest caused suspicion among the Germans who had recently occupied the town.  Just three days after his arrival, Fr. Velychkovsky was accused of co-operating with Ukrainian national resistance organisations and was ordered to leave the town in twenty-four hours.  He moved to Ternopil and became superior of the church monastery in that town.

Having seized Galicia for the second time in 1945, the Soviet regime in just one night of 10th-11th April arrested representatives of the entire Greek-Catholic hierarchy.  On 26th July 1945 Fr. Basil Velychkovsky was arrested in Ternopil - "for anti-Soviet propaganda".  During the interrogation he was offered the option of joining the Russian Orthodox Church in exchange for his freedom.  The answer was: "Never!"  Later Fr. Velychkovsky was transferred to Kiev prison, where the investigation of his case lasted for almost two years.  Finally, the Kiev regional court sentenced him to death - for two anticommunist phrases ("red horde" and "red gang") which occurred in a pocket calendar issued by Fr. Velychkovsky in Stanislaviv in 1939.

During the three months spent on death row, Fr. Velychkovsky continued performing his duties as a priest.  He taught prisoners to pray; instructed them on the truths of Christian faith, and prepared them for receiving the Holy Sacraments.  He led them to the doors of heaven.  Finally, the night came when the guards led Fr. Velychkovsky out of his cell.  However, they did not go downstairs, to the place of execution, but upstairs, to the office of the prison administration.  There, Fr. Velychkovsky was informed that his death sentence was changed to a ten-year prison term.

In the first two years of his term Fr. Basil was in a prison camp in the Kirovsk region; later, he was transferred to the Vorkuta mines.  Despite the exhausting work he celebrated the Liturgy almost every day - using tins for liturgical vessels.  "That tin" - says Metropolitan Hermaniuk (Winnipeg, Canada) - "was his chalice, his dyscos, his altar, his church … and nothing was able to destroy his church, for it was [based on his] strong conviction and God's grace."  Several months before his release, Fr. Velychkovsky's fellow prisoner friends managed to arrange for him to work in the prison hospital rather than in the mines.  This change saved his life - for his health had been ruined by ten years of imprisonment and exhausting labour.  On 9th July 1955 Fr. Velychkovsky was released.

After his return to Lviv Fr. Velychkovsky did not find any church or chapel where he could serve, but this did not discourage him.  He occupied a small room of a house and here he built an altar out of empty cardboard boxes.  The faithful visited Fr. Velychkovsky in groups of five or six to participate in Liturgies.  During the period of the Greek-Catholic Church's underground existence he was not afraid to celebrate daily Liturgy, to conduct spiritual exercises, and to provide spiritual leadership for many devoted Christians.  In 1959 the Apostolic See appointed Fr. Basil Velychkovsky a bishop of the "Church of Silence"; because of a complicated situation in the Soviet Union, his Episcopal ordination became possible only four years later when Metropolitan Slipyj ordained him a bishop in Moscow.

The ten-year-long imprisonment did not "correct" or change Bishop Velychkovsky.  He continued "spreading anticommunist propaganda among the people, did not participate in socially-useful work, did not perform the duties of a Soviet citizen; he wrote a book about the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, wherein attempts were made to prove through specific examples that atheists cannot be good citizens; he listened to Vatican radio broadcasts."  This list was sufficient to justify a new arrest of Bishop Basil Velychkovsky on 2nd January 1969.  This time the imprisonment lasted for three years; the term was served in Komunarsk near Donbass and was the cause of a severe heart disease for Bishop Velychkovsky.

On 27th January 1972 the second term of imprisonment was over.  This time Bishop Velychkovsky was not allowed to return to Lviv; instead, he was sent to Yugoslavia for "recreation".  He used this opportunity to visit his sister in Zagreb and then he departed for Rome, where he met Patriarch Yosyf Slipyj.  He also had a private audience with Pope Paul VI.  Shortly afterwards, following the invitation of Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk, Bishop Velychkovsky visited Canada.

Unfortunately, his visit of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Canada did not last for long.  On 30th June 1973 Bishop Velychkovsky died at the age of 70 having served as a bishop for 10 years.  It is believed that a slow-acting poison administered prior to his release caused his death.  Although his heart became silent in his body, it continues to sound in our souls: "Fear none of those things which thou shall suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life" (Rev 2,10).

Pope John Paul II beatified Bishop Basil Velychkovsky in Lviv, on 27th June 2001.