Basil Hopko

Basil Hopko, known in Slovak as Vasiľ Hopko, was born on 21 April 1904 in Hrabské, a village in the Šariš region of eastern Slovakia, then in the Kingdom of Hungary within Austria-Hungary. His father died while he was still an infant. His mother emigrated to the United States to earn a living and left the child in the care of his grandfather, so that he grew up in a poor rural Greek Catholic household. He attended the gymnasium in Prešov and then the Greek Catholic theological seminary in the same city. On 3 February 1929 he was ordained a priest for the Eparchy of Prešov.

Soon after ordination he was sent to Prague, where he ministered to Greek Catholic Slovaks and Rusyns and continued his studies. Recurring illness, including pulmonary disease, interrupted this work and forced periods of treatment. From the mid-1930s he was again based in Prešov as spiritual director of the seminary, a lecturer in moral and pastoral theology, and secretary to Bishop Pavol Peter Gojdič. On 11 May 1947 he was consecrated auxiliary bishop of Prešov and titular bishop of Midila, becoming Gojdič’s closest collaborator just as the Communist Party was consolidating power in Czechoslovakia.

The new regime treated the Greek Catholic Church as a political obstacle because of its union with Rome. In April 1950 the state staged a gathering in Prešov that purported to dissolve that union and fold Greek Catholics into the Orthodox Church. Hopko refused to take part. He was detained, interrogated, and in 1952 sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment for alleged treason and subversion. He was held in a succession of Czechoslovak prisons under harsh conditions, and his already fragile health declined further. He was released in 1964 on medical grounds but remained under police supervision, confined to assigned residences and barred from exercising his episcopal office.

During the Prague Spring of 1968 the Greek Catholic Church regained legal existence, yet Hopko was not restored as ordinary of Prešov. An apostolic administrator was appointed instead, and he was left with a largely honorary status, a humiliation he bore quietly. He died in Prešov on 23 July 1976. Pope John Paul II beatified him on 14 September 2003 in Bratislava, presenting him as a bishop who remained faithful to the Catholic Church and the Byzantine rite under totalitarian persecution. He is commemorated on 23 July.