After receiving his doctorate, Mykolay Charnetskyi returned to his homeland to teach dogmatic theology and philosophy at the Ukrainian Catholic Seminary in Ivano-Frankivsk (then Stanislaviv), where he remained for the next nine years and served as a student spiritual director.
Mykolay Charnetskyi wanted to live a more rigorous life than the life of a seminary professor. In 1913, the Belgian province of the Redemptorists founded a mission in Ukraine, as well as the newest district of Lviv. Mykolay Charnetskyi entered a new age in 1919.
In 1926, the Redemptorists opened Missions in Northern Ukraine (then part of Poland) in Volhynia, the main charge of which was to promote better relations between Catholics and Orthodox Ukrainians. Since Charnetskyi was a Catholic priest of the Byzantine rite, he knew well the Liturgy and Eastern spirituality that Orthodox churches live by, and this earned him great respect among the people and the clergy. Because of his devotion to the people, along with his tireless work in strengthening Orthodox-Catholic relations, Pope Pius XII named him titular bishop and Apostolic Visitator for Ukrainian Catholics in Volhynia and Podlachia. He was ordained a bishop by Bishop Hryhoriy Khomyshyn in Rome on February 2, 1931. From 1931 to 1939, he served the residents of Volhynia, Polissia, Podlachia and Belarus.
Bishop Mykolay Charnetskyi was invited by the Irish Redemptorists to the Eucharistic Congress of 1932. On the second day of the Eucharistic Congress, Charnetskyi celebrated the Pontifical Divine Liturgy for all participants of the Congress in the Jesuit Church on Gardiner Street; an iconostasis was made especially for this. The choir led by Paul Mailleux (later rector of the Pontifical Russian College in Rome) sang the Bishops' Liturgy in Church Slavonic. Fulton J. Sheen of the United States was among the clergy participants.
In 1939, the Soviet armed forces invaded Western Ukraine, forcing the Redemptorists to flee to Lviv. Two years later, Charnetskyi took up the position of professor at the Lviv Theological Academy (now the Ukrainian Catholic University), which was restored in 1941 after the occupation of the city by Nazi Germany.
In 1944, the Soviets invaded a second time, and the following year all Ukrainian Catholic bishops were arrested as part of a Soviet plan to suppress the Ukrainian Catholic Church and transfer its property to the state-sanctioned Russian Orthodox Church.
During his stay in prison, Charnetskyi was subjected to some brutal interrogations. He was arrested on April 11, 1945. He was accused of collaborating and being an agent of the Vatican; as a result, he was imprisoned and sentenced to hard labor.
At first, one of his fellow prisoners was the famous Cardinal Joseph the Blind, when both were imprisoned in Mariinsky, southern Siberia.
Based on official information, he endured 600 years of interrogations and torture and visited 30 different prisons and camps, while he maintained his dignity and non-aggressive resolution.
As a hopelessly ill person, in 1956 he received permission to go to Galicia, where he secretly continued to fulfill his archpastoral duties. He was noted for his evangelical patience and inexhaustible kindness; even during his life he was considered a holy man.
Bishop Mykolay died on April 2, 1959.
In the 1960s, during the liquidation of the cemetery, he was reburied at the Lychakiv cemetery.
On July 4, 2002, the relics of the Blessed were transferred to the Church of St. Josaphat in Lviv.
