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Notre Dame University announced Wednesday that Ukrainian archbishop Borys Gudziak will be the principal speaker and receive an honorary degree at the university’s commencement May 15.
Students, faculty and staff have “demonstrated continuing solidarity with Ukraine” over the past month and will benefit from and appreciate hearing Gudziak at the graduation celebration, Notre Dame’s president, the Reverend John I. Jenkins, said in a statement. Gudziak was raised in Syracuse, N.Y., by Ukrainian refugee parents who fled from the Communists during World War II. In 2019, Jenkins presented Gudziak with the Notre Dame Award, designated for “men and women whose life and deeds have shown exemplary dedication to the ideals for which the University stands: faith, inquiry, education, justice, public service, peace and care for the most vulnerable.”
“We have previously honored Archbishop Gudziak for his work as leader of the Ukrainian Catholic University as a center for cultural thought, for his Christian witness and for the formation of a Ukrainian society based on human dignity,” Father Jenkins’s statement said. “We now further recognize him as he speaks forcefully and eloquently in support of the Ukrainian people and in opposition to the Russian invasion of his ancestral homeland.”
Regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Gudziak said, “Ukraine has won this war morally. Today the whole world is united around Ukraine. The witness of Ukrainians, their biblical David vs. Goliath struggle, has inspired and given new purpose to a fragmenting Europe.”
