[2] Kovalyk then travelled with Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky (who was also to become a martyr) to Volhynia to work amongst the Ukrainians of the Eastern Orthodox Church in order to promote ecumenism.
After several years he went to Stanislaviv (today Ivano-Frankivsk) to take up the post of provincial bursar, while being also very engaged in the traditional Redemptorist practice of conducting missions throughout the area.
[3] Due to the Communist presence many clergy concentrated on spiritual matters when they gave a homily and avoided issues of freedom and justice.
As a preacher, Kovalyk showed no reluctance to publicly condemn the ideology and atheist customs then being introduced by the Soviets, and to preach on matters affecting the everyday lives of the people.
Even though he was warned by his friends that the Communist authorities were suspicious of him and that he should be less vocal, he is said to have replied, "If it is God's will, I am ready to die, but I cannot be quiet in the face of such injustice.
Witnesses claim that, rather than simply shooting Kovalyk, he was crucified on a corridor wall of the prison, his stomach ripped open and a dead human foetus inserted.
So I often tried to convince Father Kovalyk... that [he] needed to be more careful about the content of his sermons, that he shouldn't provoke the Bolsheviks, because here was a question of his own safety.