Worship, Funeral, and Memorial Practices of Military Chaplains of the Ukrainian Galician Army in Shaping Soldiers’ Moral Resilience, 1918–1919

Abstract

This article examines the liturgical, funerary and memorial practices of military chaplains of the Ukrainian Galician Army (UGA) during the Ukrainian-Polish War of 1918–1919. The study argues that pastoral ministry in the military environment extended well beyond the boundaries of strictly religious service, fulfilling the broader function of moral consolidation within combat units. Operating under conditions of acute material deprivation, epidemics and the psychological strain of near-constant combat, the chaplains of the UGA – predominantly Greek Catholic priests – became indispensable figures in sustaining the fighting capacity of a newly formed national army. The article analyses three interconnected dimensions of chaplaincy practice. In the sphere of liturgical activity, field services, confessions, homilies and blessings of arms and banners transformed the profane space of the battlefield into a sacred realm, imbuing the soldiersʼ struggle with transcendent meaning and reinforcing their readiness for self-sacrifice. The sacrament of confession, administered on the eve of major operations, performed a function analogous to modern psychological debriefing, alleviating acute stress and strengthening the inner resolve of combatants. In the domain of funerary practice, chaplains ensured that the fallen received a dignified burial even under active combat conditions. Through abbreviated funeral rites, graveside orations and the improvised marking of field graves, they invested the soldierʼs death with religious, moral and national significance. Three semantic strategies are identified in the chaplainsʼ treatment of death: the martyrological (equating the fallen soldier with a martyr for the faith), the sacrificial (presenting death as a voluntary offering that hastens national liberation), and the immortality strategy (proclaiming the eternal memory of the dead as an obligation binding the living). These narratives were consistently reproduced in sermons, obituaries and the emerging military press. Memorial practices – commemorative panakhydas, graveside speeches, the cultivation of soldier-martyrs as collective figures of memory – constituted a systematic cultural phenomenon that anchored collective remembrance and reinforced the will to continue the struggle. The article further demonstrates that the UGA chaplain functioned as a multi-dimensional mediator: between the religious and the military, between personal fate and the national cause, between institutional authority and individual moral agency. This polyfunctionality, rooted in the traditional social prestige of the Greek Catholic clergy in Galician rural society, endowed chaplains with a moral authority that complemented and, in certain respects, surpassed that of the military command structure. The findings suggest that the ritual practices of UGA chaplains constituted a coherent system of symbolic action operating simultaneously at the individual-psychological, micro-social and macro-symbolic levels, and thus represent a significant, if underexplored, factor in the moral resilience of the Galician army.