53. However, even in more recent times the bishops and priests and their faithful flocks have needed fortitude and constancy of spirit to retain their Catholic faith, protect the Church and defend its sacred liberty. Among them we must recall here, with special honor, the metropolitan Andrew Szepticky. During the first European war, when Galicia was occupied by Russian armies, he was expelled from his see and deported to a monastery, where he was for a time at least kept in prison; he had no greater desire than to testify to his great veneration for the Apostolic See, and even, sustained by God's grace, gladly to suffer martyrdom for his flock, for whose welfare he had already long spent his strength and solicitude.