Myroslav Marynovych is Vice Rector for University Mission of the Ukrainian Catholic University and the President of UCU’s Institute of Religion and Society.
He was a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (Human Rights Watch). For this membership he spent 10 years in the Soviet gulag (1977-1987). He was also founder of the Ukrainian Association of Amnesty International. He has received fellowships at Columbia University and Emory University (USA), the World Council of Churches (Switzerland), and the Catholic University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands).
In 1997 Marynovych founded the Institute of Religion and Society at the Lviv Theological Academy (now the Ukrainian Catholic University). The institute studies religious freedom, social doctrine, and the diverse religious activity in today’s Ukraine. He was the director of the institute until 2007, when he became its president.
He was the Vice Rector in Matters of External Relations of the Lviv Theological Academy, then UCU, from 2000 to 2005, and then Senior Vice Rector of UCU from 2005 to 2008, when he became Vice Rector for University Mission.
In addition to publications of the institute, Marynovych has written numerous other works, including: The Gospel According to God’s Fool , written in a labor camp and published abroad (1988), and later translated into German and French (1990, 1991); Ukraine on the Margins of Holy Scripture (1991); Ukraine: A Long Way through the Desert (1993); Ukrainians and Jews: Paradigmatic Models of Survival, published in Jerusalem (1991); Ecumenical Processes in Ukraine, published in Germany (1999); The Ukrainian Idea and Christianity (2003); and An Ecumenist Analyzes the History and Prospects of Religion in Ukraine (2004), in English. He has also written some 100 articles and reports devoted to religious studies and the analysis of religious and social processes in Ukraine.
He is an advisor on ecumenical issues for Lubomyr Cardinal Husar, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. He was an official auditor at the worldwide Synod of Bishops in Rome in 2002.
He has lectured in numerous countries of Europe, including Germany, Italy and France (at the Sorbonne). He has attended conferences on ecumenical and human rights themes in Holland, Sweden, Austria, and other countries.
Among his awards, Myroslav Marynovych received a prize from the journal Suchasnist (“Modernity”) for his political science report “Atoning for Communism” (1993), the Valerii Marchenko award from the Ukrainian-American Bureau for Protection of Human Rights for the best human rights publication (1995), and the Vladimir Zhabotinsky Medal for the promotion of inter-ethnic understanding from the Ukraine-Israel Society (1999). In 2000 he was recognized as one of western Ukraine’s outstanding civic leaders.
In 2006 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko awarded Marynovych the Order “For Courage,” 1st degree, and Polish President Lech Kaczynski awarded him the Equestrian Order of the Cross for his contributions to Ukrainian-Polish mutual understanding. In 2008 President Yushchenko awarded him the Order of Freedom and in 2009 he received the Vasyl Stus Prize.
