Today, 19th June, is the anniversary of death of Blessed Yakym Senkivsky, who died during Stalin’s persecution of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1941. This persecution was particularly brutal attempt to stamp out belief in God and to remove all Church run institutions and media from daily life. Blessed Yakym is one of the 25 martyrs beatified by Blessed Pope John Paul the Great in 2001, all of whom were members of the Greek Catholic Church in the Ukraine. God Bless!