He is considered a martyr in the Catholic Church, due to his death in 1973 of injuries sustained while imprisoned by the Soviet Union for his faith.

In 1925, he took his first religious vows in the village of Holosko near Lviv in the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (better known as the Redemptorists) and was ordained a priest.

As a priest-monk Vasyl Velychkovsky taught and preached in Volyn, a Ukrainian-majority province in interwar Poland.

[3] Thirty years after his death, Vasyl Velychkovsky's body was found to be almost incorrupt (his toes had fallen off and the relics were subsequently divided).

[3] The body relic of Vasyl Velychkovsky is enshrined at St. Joseph's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.