Gunned Down At The Altar: The Murder of Fr. Basil Stetsuk

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO TODAY, October 7, 1923, it was Sunday morning in Chicago.

Fr. Basil Stetsuk, pastor of the very large and grand St. Nicholas Church in Chicago, normally didn’t hear confessions on Sunday morning. Although pastor of arguably the largest parish in the US at that time with 6,000 souls, the young priest would often celebrate the Divine Liturgy at St. Michael’s—a tiny church two miles north which served a largely Carpatho-Rusyn congregation.

St. Michael Greek Catholic Church was built in 1918. In the 1930s it transfered to the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of Johnstown, PA. They sold this church in the 1960s and moved Niles, Il. It became a Baptist church and, most recently, St. Andrew's Romanian Orthodox Church. Images from Flickr and Facebook.

A heavily veiled woman inside St. Michael's approached the sacristan saying she was gravely ill and needed to confess. The sacristan spoke with Fr. Basil who agreed to hear her confession right before the start of Liturgy. The small church was filling up with people.

Emily Strutynsky knelt as if to confess.

The first shot rang out—a bullet ripped through Fr. Basil's mouth. He ran behind the altar shouting “My God! Help me! I am shot!"

A second shot rang out—the bullet grazing the priest’s torso and was embedded in a side altar. Fr. Basil started stumbling down the main aisle of the packed church.

A third, fatal shot rang out— ripping through his back and heart.

The 35-year-old former secretary to Bishop Soter Ortynsky lay dead in his vestments on the floor of the small St. Michael's Church.

The killer was the wife of Fr. Nicholas Strutynsky, the former pastor and builder of St. Nicholas in Chicago. Now, he is pastor in the tiny village of Ramey, PA.

Emily Strutynsky was apprehended by two women and held until the police came. Soon, hundreds of angry Ukrainians gathered at Shakespeare Police Station where she was taken. Newspaper accounts report that a riot nearly broke out as the agitated crowds simmered, calling for her head.

Newspapers around the world carried the story and the Ukrainian community across the United States was sent into a period of disbelief, anger, and grief. It's most beloved, young priest was brutally murdered in church.

Image of the side altar and diagram of the murder are from the Chicago Tribune.

Basil Stetsuk was born on February 2, 1888 in the small village of Hlynkyky, Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine. His father was the diak (cantor) of the local church and he had three siblings. An obvious standout from his youth, by grade 8 he was conducting the choir of the Ternopil Gymnasium. With his bright tenor voice, the choir toured throughout Halychyna (Galicia).

From "Lystok Zhaloby." Caption reads, "The departed Fr. Basil Stetsuk and family.

In 1912 he married Kateryna from the neighboring village. The 25-year-old Basil then traveled to L’viv for priestly ordination from the saintly hands of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky in October. Fr. Basil and his wife then embarked for the US and arrived at Ellis Island on December 26, 1912 to take up his new job—secretary to Bishop Soter Ortynsky, the first Greek Catholic Bishop in the United States.

Ordination certificate of Fr. Basil Stetsuk from the saintly Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. Courtesty of Fr. Ivan Kaszczak.

Fr. Basil served as Ortynsky’s secretary and simultaneously as rector of the Philadelphia Cathedral until the Bishop’s untimely death in 1916.

From there the Stetsuk family, now with daughter Olga moved to the large parish in Elizabeth, NJ, where their son George was born. After two years in Elizbaeth, the Stetsuk family moved to the even larger parish of Holy Trinity in Youngstown, OH, where he became pastor—a post he held for three years.

In early 1922 he was assigned landmark, thirteen-domed St. Nicholas Church on Oakley and Rice St., which today is the Cathedral of the Chicago Eparchy, territorially the largest diocese in the world.

Chicago Tribune.

In Chicago, as in the other cities he served, he was quickly seen as a leader: spiritual, moral, patriotic. He was seemingly at every meeting, church school event, civic rallies. He directed a men’s choir and was regarded as a gifted homilist. Young, genuine, dynamic, ascendant, well-loved whose life was cut short by the wife of the long-term pastor he effectively replaced.

Emily Strutynsky, daughter of a priest, was 44 years old when she murdered Fr. Stetsuk. The Chicago Tribune described her as “quiet, well poised and slightly analytical.” She had come to Chicago several weeks prior to killing the priest.

“When I came to Chicago…. I began to visit the neighborhood of the Church of St. Nicholas. I dared not venture near the church itself because I feared that I might be recognized. I saw to that. But each day I grew more venturesome.”

“One day I discovered that Fr. Stetsuk held mass ever Sunday morning in the tiny chapel of St. Michael the Argchangel. And so I began to frequent that vicinity. I became well acquainted with it. Last Sunday I was there, but no one saw me. I took good care of that.”

Emily Strutynsky, Chicago Tribune.

“Last night I saw Fr. Stetsuk walking near the Church of St. Nicholas, and I hesitated over the project of killing him then. The temptation was great, but I reflected that my plans might miscarry. I waited until morning.”

She told her husband, pastor of St. Mary’s in the tiny village of Ramey, PA, that she was going to visit her (also a murderer) brother in Rochester. Her brother, Myroslav Sichinsky, was famous for assinating the Viceroy of Galicia, Andrej Potocki in 1908. He escaped prison after a life sentence and found his way to New York and eventually died in his own bed in Detroit in 1979.

Instead of going to Rochester, she stopped in Pittsburgh to see her daughter and then claimed to have borrowed a pistol from Fr. Valentine Balogh of Youngstown, OH. She then arrived in Chicago to kill Fr. Stetsuk.

“My husband built the great Ukrainian church of St. Nicholas. It is a beautiful church. He gave his life to it. And then he was dismissed. The wonderful church of St. Nicholas was turned over to Fr. Stetsuk. He was wasting the money

of the parish.”

St. Mary's Annunciation Church in Ramey, PA. From the UNA Almanac of 1934.

Emily was quite chatty with the press and police. She told the police, “When I am executed the people will understand.” And also that Fr. Stetsuk was “a cheat and a hypocrite” who she “had to kill.”

She continues, “he had a good voice, he had smooth ways, a charming personality. God gave him these things. That’s not his credit. Then he prostituted them by selling people—his own parishioners—to other churches, for money, for power.”

Emily Strutynsky in custody. Chicago Tribune.

“If I’d waited a year his people would have found him out. Ask in Philadelphia where he used to be. He used his hypnotic power there. There’s two girls in the insane asylum just on his account. When he preaches he makes people babbling children, crying. He was dangerous. He was bad.”

“I had to kill him. It might have been a saloon, but it happened to be a church. He was just as bad in one as in thew other. But don’t you’ see, I did it for the masses. And I hurt their feelings, those people in the church, by killing their priest at his altar. Now it will take them just so much longer to see the truth of it all—just so much longer before it will help Europe.”

Fr. Stetsuk’s brother-in-law in Philadelphia, differed. He was quoted as saying, “the reason she gave was a contemptible lie. Jealously may have been partly the motive—jealous because Fr. Stetsuk made good at a church in which her husband had failed.”

Emily Strutynsky was sentenced in 1924 to a prison in Kankakee, IL. After teaching inmates and settling into the place, she escaped on July 10, 1927 and jumped to her death off a bridge into the Kankakee river.

Epilogue

Over 4,000 people attended Fr. Basil Stetsuk's funeral which was held at St. Nicholas Church on October 11, 1923 and served by 14 priests. Thousands of people lined the streets to watch the slow moving funeral procession.

From "Lystok Zhaloby." Caption reads, "The family's final farewell to the resposed Fr. Basil Stetsuk in St. Nicholas Church.

From "Lystok Zhaloby." Caption reads, "Funeral procession from the home of Fr. Basil Stetsuk.

Fr. Stetsuk is buried at St. Mary’s Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery outside of Philadelphia.

Fr. Basil Stetsuk's grave at St. Mary's Cemetery in Fox Chase, PA. Courtesy of Fr. Ivan Kaszczak.

Kateryna Stetsuk remarried and is buried next to her children at St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery in Chicago. Fr. Nicholas Strutynsky died in 1943 is buried at St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery in Minersville, PA. The body of Emily Strutynsky was never recovered.

The spelling of Fr. Basil Stetsuk's name comes from period artciles and directories, both secular and ecclesial. If transliterated from the Ukrainian, it would be spelled Fr. Vasyl Stetsiuk. Quotes from Emily Strutynsky come from the Chicago Tribune.

And special thanks to Fr. Ivan Kaszczak for his generosity and for sharing his expertise on the history of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the US, of which he is the preeminent scholar.

May the memory of Fr. Basil be eternal! Вічная памʼять!