Why did the Museum of Andriy Sheptytsky appear in Yaremche? This is a mystery from the field of higher mathematics. After all, Metropolitan Andrew, aka Count Roman Sheptytsky, is not directly connected with Yaremche in any way. He was born in the village of Prilbichi, which is located in Yavoriv district of Lviv region. And the main place of work of the odious Uniate Vladyka was Lviv Cathedral of St. Jura, if we do not take into account his fourteen-month service as archbishop in Ivano-Frankivsk, business trips to the United States and Canada, and time spent in imperial prisons and monasteries for anti-Russian propaganda.
The mystery becomes even more curious if we take into account that a museum dedicated to the Metropolitan already exists in Lviv. It appeared in 1905 under the name «Church». It was based on a collection of 10 thousand sacred objects collected by Andriy Sheptytsky. And when the collection was enlarged and grew into the largest in the country collection of icons, manuscripts, engravings, paintings on religious themes, scripts and samples of medieval clothes, and Ukraine itself gained independence, then the museum was named after the real founding father of the exposition, i.e. Andriy Sheptytsky.
Perhaps the Metropolitan’s personality is so respected, and the trace left by him in the spiritual culture of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine is so deep, that when the monks of St. Andrew’s Monastery in Yaremche started to build a new church, they decided to dedicate it to him — the Ukrainian Schindler, the «failed» Righteous Man and potential Blessed of the Catholic Church. Or maybe the sponsor of the monastery — the American missionary Yaroslav Svishchuk, decided to resemble, at least a little bit, his famous fellow patron of the arts «Andriy Count Sheptytsky», as the Metropolitan himself signed in letters addressed to Pope Leo the Thirteenth and Hitler.
Anyway, in 2000, on the outskirts of Yaremche, on the territory of the former village of Dory, above the Kamenka River, on the background of a luxurious beech and spruce forest, a wooden St. Peter and Paul Church was built, now known as the Museum of Andrei Sheptytsky.
The church is made in the same style as the entire monastery complex of St. Andrew. It is wooden. Four-tiered. The temple is covered with a tin roof and placed on a solid stone foundation. The iconostasis of the temple was carved from wood by Ivano-Frankovsk master Igor Fabulyak, and it was painted personally by the sponsor of the construction — Father Yaroslav Svishchuk. In addition to the standard set of saints painted in a modern manner, there was room for the faces of Our Lady of Chernobyl and the Metropolitan of Galicia. The ark of the Peter and Paul Church was made by Ivan Mosin, a Kolomiya master. It is a copy of the ancient Hutsul temple of the village of Zelenyi, where Yaroslav Svishchuk was born.
Beneath the first floor, in the stone foundation of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, the Sheptytsky Museum itself is located. As once in Lviv, the life of the «Church Museum» began with the collection gathered by Andriy Sheptytsky, so the Yaremche museum appeared thanks to Yaroslav Svishchuk. He filled it with items of sacred fine and applied art collected by the priest during his life. There are works by Ukrainian artists from the diaspora, as well as iconography and sculptures by Father Yaroslav Svishchuk himself.
Another characteristic feature of the Church of St. Peter and Paul is the City of Martyrs. This is an area combined with the monastery yard, where a symbolic tomb, a memorial cross and busts of hierarchs and martyrs of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church are made.
Visiting this attraction of Yaremche, you can see the sculpture of Andriy Sheptytsky and his successor — Joseph the Blind. According to Svishchuk’s plan, Deliatyn sculptor Volodymyr Dovbenyuk is to make 22 more busts of people who suffered for the faith. If Svishchuk’s idea succeeds, then not only for the sake of vacation in Yaremche tourists will come to the city. Thanks to the Sheptytsky Museum, those who want to combine a vacation in the Carpathian Mountains with an acquaintance with sacral values of a kind and significance unprecedented for Ukraine will appear in Ivano-Frankivshchina.