Faith in Britain

an AnaBaptist - and Bill Hampson, Chairman of the Organisation Committee of the Movement for Christian Democracy. He is an Independent Methodist from the Lancashire town of Leigh. In 1986 we had previously travelled together to the Soviet Union visiting a number of key Christian and Jewish dissidents, including Valeri Barinov's family, Inna Begun, and Vladimir and Marsha Slepak. At the conclusion of that visit we held talks with the Kremlin's Religious Affairs Department. The Soviet authorities subsequently issued exit visas for all three of these families.

In 1989, at Lvov, we spent two days with Ivan Hel, the Chairman of the Committee for the Defence of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. We also spent time with an outlawed bishop, Pavlo Vasylyk. I subsequently met Hel and Bishop Vasylyk again in January 1990 in Moscow and again at the Ampleforth Conference in August 1990. By then, having received overwhelming support in the elections of March 4th, 1990, Hel had been elected to the Ukrainian Parliament. He sits as a Christian Democrat.

Hel's appearance reminds you of the bluff exterior of Lech Walesa. So does his indomitable faith and tenacity.

Hel spent fifteen years in jail, first at Mordovia Prison. Like Ogorodnikov he was subsequently held at Perm in the far away Urals, the notorious 'camp of death'.

Temperatures frequently plunged below zero. Hel was kept half naked and fed infrequently. He told me that he was 'morally and physically terrorised'. For three years letters from his wife, Maria, and his daughter, were not permitted. He was released in 1987.

Hel's first brush with the KGB was in 1961 while he was a student. He remained active in the movement for the legalisation of the Church and was inevitably arrested in 1972.

Vasylyk was secretly consecrated as a bishop in 1974 - and spent eighteen years in jail. While free, he carried out his ministry by night. During the day he was forced to act as a collector of herbs. From 1946 until 1989 it was illegal to celebrate the liturgies in public. This clandestine church of the Ukrainian catacombs gathered its faithful in the fields, in barns and in forests. Even as recently as January 1990 Bishop Vasylyk had been refused the right to register at his family home, effectively preventing him from taking up other rights. He joked with me, saying that 'For an Englishman your home is your castle, mine has become my prison.' I wrote to Gorbachev on his behalf and in August 1990 he was permitted to travel to Ampleforth; not quite an English castle but in the same class.

Bishop Vasylyk introduced us to a young priest, officially a boiler stoker. Father Makhaylo Havryliv was caught celebrating a public liturgy. His punishment was