Blessed Zenon was born in 1903.  He took his vows as a Redemptorist in 1926 and was ordained in 1932 after which he was engaged in mission work.  During the night of 20th – 21st December 1940 he was arrested and underwent torture and brutal interrogation.  During his six months in prison he endured no less than twenty-eight interrogations, during which he was always savagely beaten.  The German forces entered Lviv in June 1941 and when the soviet prisons were opened to free the captives, heaps of corpses were found showing clear signs of torture.  According to witnesses, Blessed Zenon was crucified against on a wall in the prison.  He was thirty-eight.

Fr. Zenon Kovalyk was born on 18 August 1903 in a village near Ternopil to a poor peasant family.  Before becoming a Redemptorist he worked as a primary school teacher in his village.  He had a strong character and never compromised his faith.  The dream of Zenon's childhood was to become a priest.  Having discovered his vocation to consecrated life, Zenon Kovalyk joined the Redemptorists.  He professed his vows as a Redemptorist on 28th August 1926.  Shortly afterwards he was sent to Belgium for his philosophical and theological studies.

After his return to Ukraine, on 9th August 1932 Zenon Kovalyk was ordained a priest.  The little prayer cards commemorating his ordination bore the following inscription: "O Jesus, receive me [as a sacrifice] together with the Holy Sacrifice of your Flesh and Blood.  Receive it for the Holy Church, for my Congregation and for my Motherland".  Christ received these words as a most pure offering.  Little did Fr. Kovalyk know that those words were prophetic, and that soon - in just nine years - they would come true in his martyrdom.

After his ordination Fr. Kovalyk went, together with Bishop Nicholas Charnetskyi, to the Volhyn region to serve the cause of reconciliation with Orthodox Ukrainians.  The young priest was a true joy to his confreres.  Fr. Kovalyk had a good sense of humour, beautiful voice and clear diction.  His apostolic devotion attracted thousands of people.  Fr. Zenon loved the Mother of God with all his heart, and always displayed sincere piety towards her.  These qualities of Fr. Kovalyk brought him great success in his missionary activities.

Having spent several years working in the Volhyn region, Fr. Kovalyk was transferred to Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk) to conduct missions there, both in town and in the surrounding villages.  Immediately before the Soviet invasion of 1939 he moved to the Redemptorist monastery in Lviv, where he was appointed bursar.

The courageous priest continued preaching the Word of God even after the Soviet invasion had started.  An important field of Fr. Kovalyk's work was hearing confessions, and it is in this field that he had particular success: he was always approached by a great number of people seeking spiritual support.

While most of the Galician Ukrainians were overpowered by terror, Fr. Zenon displayed admirable courage.  Most of the preachers were extremely cautious in their sermons.  They tried to avoid the burning issues of the day and concentrated on exhorting people to be faithful to God.  Fr. Kovalyk, on the contrary, was never afraid to openly condemn the atheistic customs introduced by the Soviet regime.  His sermons had a great impact on the audience, but at the same time constituted no small danger for the preacher.  When advised by his friends of the possible danger resulting from such manner of preaching, Fr. Kovalyk answered: "I will receive death gladly if such be God's will, but I shall never compromise my conscience as a preacher".

The last great sermon by Fr. Kovalyk took place in Ternopil on 28th August 1940 on the occasion of the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God.  That day, Fr. Kovalyk had some ten thousand faithful in his audience.  His old dream of martyrdom was to come true in just a few months.

On the night of 20th – 21st December 1940 the agents of the Soviet secret police entered the Redemptorist monastery to arrest Fr. Kovalyk for his sermons at the novena of the Immaculate Conception, which he had been delivering in the monastery church.  Before leaving his confreres, Fr. Kovalyk asked his superior Fr. De Vocht for the last blessing and absolution.

Although the Redemptorists had long tried to find out about their arrested confrere, it was only in April 1941 that they received information about Fr. Kovalyk being kept in prison in the so-called "Bryhidky" prison.  During his six months long imprisonment, Fr. Kovalyk underwent 28 painful interrogations; three times he was brought to other prisons and interrogated there.  After one such interrogation, which was accompanied by especially cruel tortures, he fell seriously ill due to considerable loss of blood.

While in prison, Fr. Kovalyk continued his apostolic work.  He shared a tiny and unfurnished cell (4.20 by 3.50 metres) with 32 other inmates.  Fr. Kovalyk together with the prisoners prayed five decades of the rosary on weekdays and the fifteen decades on Sundays.  In addition, Fr. Kovalyk conducted liturgical prayers; on the feast of Epiphany he treated the inmates to the liturgical consecration of water and in May he organized prayers to the Mother of God.  Apart from prayers, Fr. Kovalyk heard confessions, conducted spiritual exercises and catechism, and consoled the inmates by narrating - in his peculiar humorous manner - various religious stories.  No wonder that the prisoners - people in the greatest need of hope and consolation - truly loved Fr. Kovalyk for his apostolic character.

In 1941, when German troops invaded Lviv, the prison guards, eager to flee but not able to take the prisoners along, started shooting them.  However, it was not enough for them just to shoot Fr. Kovalyk: reminding him of his sermons about the crucified Christ, they nailed Fr. Kovalyk to the prison wall in full view of his fellow prisoners.

When German troops entered Lviv, they immediately opened the prisons to clean up the piles of corpses that had already started to decay.  The people rushed to the prisons hoping to find their relatives.  As the witnesses relate, the most horrible sight was that of a priest crucified upon the prison wall, his stomach cut open and a dead human foetus pushed into the cut.

Of Fr. Zenon Kovalyk we can rightfully use the words from the vespers of a Martyr: “You are great, were known as an indomitable warrior.  Your power was the Cross; you went to fight the enemy’s strength and overpowered it.  Glorious in battle, you accepted the crown of victory from the one unconquerable Lord, who reigns forever.”  The blessed martyrdom of Fr. Zenon Kovalyk can serve as a graphic representation of the following words from Scripture: "The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them … For if before men, indeed, they be punished, yet is their hope full of immortality; having suffered a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself" (Wisdom 3,1.4-5).

Pope John Paul II beatified Fr. Zenon Kovalyk in Lviv, on 27th June 2001.