Both Orthodox and Ukrainians Catholic (Uniate) Christians celebrate Easter according to the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar. Easter is observed with various different church services during Lent and Holy Week. One of the most significant for the community is the ritual of blessing Easter baskets. Congregants bring baskets filled with ritual foods to either Easter Saturday or Easter Sunday liturgy and they are displayed and blessed by the priest before being taken home for a...

Both Orthodox and Ukrainians Catholic (Uniate) Christians celebrate Easter according to the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar. Easter is observed with various different church services during Lent and Holy Week. One of the most significant for the community is the ritual of blessing Easter baskets. Congregants bring baskets filled with ritual foods to either Easter Saturday or Easter Sunday liturgy and they are displayed and blessed by the priest before being taken home for a special Easter Sunday breakfast. The basket contents include ham and sausage, cooked eggs, cheese, salt, horseradish and beet relish, and a paska, a special Easter bread. The basket is usually decorated with pysanky (specially decorated eggs with symbolic patterns) and covered with a rushnyk (embroidered ritual cloth). In good weather, the basket blessing ceremony may take place outdoors.

Father Mykola Matychak (13 Dec 1922-17 March 2000) was born in Stibno, Przemysl (Peremyshl). He was educated locally, attending Przemysl gymnasium from 1936 and graduating from the school in Drohobych in 1942. He worked for the town council and at a milk plant before joining the Galicia Division in 1943, taking his officers' exams to become a lieutenant. After the division’s surrender to the British on 10 May 1945, he was interned in Italy at camps in Bellaria and Rimini. During his time in the Italian POW camps, he was recruited by Bishop Buchko as a seminarian, and by the end of 1945, was studying at the Pontifical Urban University (Urbaniana). He received a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1947, a bachelor's in sacred theology in 1950 and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology in 1951, in which year he was also ordained.

He relocated to Great Britain in December 1951 and was assigned as curate of the Coventry pastoral zone, which served the West Midlands and Southwest of England. In March 1953, he moved to Wolverhampton, and was then reassigned to Edinburgh in December 1953, to serve the whole of Scotland. From 1955, Cumbria and Northumbria were added to his area. He served Scotland and Northern England until 1971 when he was transferred to Peterborough, returning to Scotland for a final year in 1974-5. His work in Scotland was extensive. He founded chapters of the Marian Brotherhood and Sisterhood, organised community activities and pilgrimages, and established Ukrainian Saturday Schools. He also supported the Orthodox community in Scotland by sharing his church premises with them whilst helping them to form their own congregation.

He led services in the chapel at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre on Mansion House Road in Edinburgh, at Saint Columba Roman Catholic Church on Upper Grey Street, and sometimes in St Patrick's. In 1964, he and the congregation acquired a church in Dalmeney Street, Leith, which was rechristened Our Lady of Pochaiv and St Andrew in 1965. He was known as the Saint Paul of Scotland by the Scottish Roman Catholic clergy and made an honorary canon of the Lviv Metropolitan Chapter by Cardinal Yosyf Slipyi, after his visit to Scotland in 1970.

Father Matychak spent two years at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Rome from 1975 at the invitation of Cardinal Slipyj. On his return to England, he served in Halifax at the church of the Holy Protectress until 1987, when he transferred to Sacred Heart in Wolverhampton, where he finished the construction of the new church dedicated to Saints Volodymyr and Olha. In 1981, he was elevated by Patriarch Josyf Slipyj too mitred archpriest, and in 1989, welcomed the new apostolic exarch for Great Britain, Bishop Michael Kuchmiak. He died in Wolverhampton and his parastas and funeral were held at the church he had completed. According to his family’s wishes, he was buried at Zymna Voda in the Lviv region in Ukraine.