Josyf Slipyj was born in the village of Zazdrist (Terebovlia povit), Galicia (in modern Ternopil Oblast), then a crownland of Austria-Hungary.

As a teen Josyf studied at the gymnasium in Ternopil and then at the Lviv Greek-Catholic Seminary and Innsbruck University in Austria, before being ordained a priest on 30 June 1917.

In 1926, Slipyj became a member of the supervisory board of the Lviv National Museum, and in 1931 Deputy Chairman of the Ukrainian Catholic Union.

Due to his scholarly merits and active development of Ukrainian cultural and religious life, Slipyi became a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

After Soviet troops captured Lviv, Slipyj was arrested along with other bishops in 1945 by the NKVD, convicted to penal servitude, allegedly for collaboration with the Nazi regime.

At this time Soviet authorities forcibly convened an assembly of 216 priests, and on 9 March 1946 and the following day, the so-called "Synod of Lviv" was held in St. George's Cathedral.

The Union of Brest, the council at which the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church formally entered into ecclesiastic communion with the Holy See, was revoked.

Slipyj rejected any offers of conversion into Orthodoxy and was continuously sentenced in 1953, 1957, 1962, thus totally imprisoned for 18 years in camps in Siberia and Mordovia (Dubravlag in Potma).

Slipyj spent five years in Maklakovo (Krasnoyarsk region), where he wrote a multi-volume history of the Catholic Church in Ukraine.

From the start of his arrival in Rome the Major Archbishop strove to organize the self-management of the local Ukrainian Catholic Church, headed by the patriarch.

[15][16] As a Major Archbishop with Patriarchal rights, Slipyj gathered a number of synods of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Although Slipyj was banned from entering Ukraine by the leaders of the USSR, including Nikita Khrushchev, nevertheless he refused to give up his Soviet passport.

[17][18] His body lay in state at the church of Santa Sofia on Via Boccea; Pope John Paul II visited to pay his respects.

A number of Ukrainian cities' streets hold the name of Patriarch Josyf Slipyj (Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kolomyia).

The parliament suggested that the government establish an organizational committee that would develop a program of events to honor the anniversary on the state-wide level.

To commemorate the 125th anniversary of birth of Major Archbishop of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and long-sentenced political prisoner of Soviet concentration camps, Lviv regional council dedicated the year 2017 to Josyf Slipyj.

West's protagonist is Kiril Pavlovich Lakota, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Lviv, who is freed by the Soviet Premier after 17 years in a Siberian labor camp.

The novelty of a Ukrainian pope in a post-Cuban Missile Crisis, Cold War world led to the book being featured on The New York Times Best Seller list.

It was the number 1 bestseller of the entire year on the Publishers Weekly fiction list, and the parallels led to increased fame for Slipyj.

Hollywood's film version appeared in 1968, starring Anthony Quinn as Lakota/Kiril I and Laurence Olivier as the (fictional) USSR Premier Piotr Ilyich Kamenev (and Lakota's jailer).