The Neo-Union Church in Volyn during the Second World War

The neo-Union movement, as an attempt by the Catholic Church to annex the Orthodox population of Poland, began to spread in Volyn in 1925. Despite the hopes of its ideologues, neo-Union did not gain much popularity here, with no more than twenty neo-Union centres established in Volyn before the outbreak of World War II, some of which had already ceased to exist by then. As a component of the spiritual life of Volynians in interwar Poland, neo-Union has so far attracted only a few researchers, and almost no one has focused on its development during the Second World War. The purpose of this research is to analyze the functioning of the Neo-Union Church in Volyn during this historical period. For the first time, special attention is given to the development of the Neo-Union Church in 1941–1944, with clarified data on its life in 1939–1941. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, and a critical approach to the analysis of source material, utilizing various historical and interdisciplinary scientific methods: descriptive, systemic and structural, comparative and historical, classification and systematization, statistical, and prosopographic. The analysis of source materials revealed that by the end of 1939, the newly established Soviet government had liquidated the main missionary centers of the Neo-Union Church in Volyn: the monasteries in Kovel and Liubeshiv, as well as the seminary in Dubno. By the summer of 1941, several Neo-Union parishes had ceased to exist, and several priests had retired from the ministry. The Soviet security services played a role in this, taking measures to weaken Neo-Unionist centers. The Nazi occupation authorities, established with the beginning of the Soviet-German war, did not prohibit the development of the Neo-Union Church, but they did not help to strengthen it either. The religious movement was weakened by the lack of unity regarding administrative subordination, as well as the death of several priests. The complete elimination of the remnants of the Neo-Union Church in Volyn in 1945 was the result of a movement initiated by the authorities to bring the Uniates into Orthodoxy.