ACI Prensa Staff, 10 December, 2024 / 2:00 pm (ACI Africa).
Among the new crop of cardinals created by Pope Francis on Dec. 7, Cardinal Mykola Bychok, CSSR, stands out. He is the bishop of the Eparchy of Sts. Peter and Paul in Melbourne for Ukrainian Catholics in Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania, and at age 44, he has become the youngest cardinal in the world.
The website of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Australia explains that the new cardinal belongs to an Eastern-rite church, so for the Dec. 7 occasion he wore “a purple robe according to the old Kyivan tradition” that was “adorned with embroidered images of Sts. Peter and Paul.”
“On his head he wore a black koukoul [or koukoulion] in accordance with the Ukrainian monastic tradition, styled after the 17th-century Brest Union and trimmed with a thin red border.” Bychok also wore on his chest a medallion with an image of the Virgin Mary.
During the ceremony, Pope Francis placed a red skullcap and biretta on the heads of all the other cardinals whereas on Bychok he placed the koukoulion.
The 1596 Union of Brest (or Brześć) united Orthodox Christians in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the Holy See, leading to what is now the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
