PHILADELPHIA (OSV News) — An acclaimed female iconographer — whose work adorns more than 80 churches in the U.S., including a national shrine — is being remembered for her lifelong mission to bring others to the Lord through sacred art.
Christine Dochwat died March 26 at the age of 91 in Jeffersonville, Pennsylvania, with Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of Philadelphia presiding at her April 7 funeral liturgy.
In a statement provided to OSV News, the archbishop described Dochwat as “an artist of monumental achievement, of personal humility and great integrity.”
Prolific artist and sincere believer
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, released an April 2 message of condolence, saying he had learned of Dochwat’s passing with “great sadness.”
He recalled Dochwat as “a sincere believer who devotedly loved her Church and lived according to its teachings.”
Among the churches housing Dochwat’s best-known works are the Byzantine Rite Chapel in the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, which Archbishop Gudziak described as “one of the most popular chapels” at the site, with more than 15 million people estimated to have visited.
A highly prolific artist, Dochwat also created 56 icons for the iconostasis, or icon screen, at Philadelphia’s Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, along with another 60 mosaics on the cathedral’s walls — all of which were “produced in a matter of six or seven years,” said Archbishop Gudziak.
Dochwat’s work is also housed at the cathedral’s Treasury of Faith Museum, as well as at St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Kyiv.
Several Missionary Sisters of the Mother of God, who oversee the Treasury of Faith Museum, recalled to OSV News seeing Dochwat perched on scaffolding in the large cathedral installing her work.
Archbishop Gudziak said Dochwat’s “relationship with the Lord translated through icons,” and “spreads God’s blessings to all who come and pray to the Lord before his images.”
Pursuing God
Even as a child, said the archbishop, Dochwat pursued the beauty of the divine amid the horrors of evil.
Born in 1934 in Ukraine’s Ternopil region, she “confronted the Russian communist invasion as a five-year-old,” and at the age of seven, “the Nazis came, and the Holocaust surrounded her,” Archbishop Gudziak said.
With her father arrested by the Soviets and sent to Siberia, Dochwat, then 10, fled with her mother and sister, spending three years as a refugee in postwar Germany before the family, then destitute, arrived in the U.S. in 1947.
Settling in Philadelphia, Dochwat built a new life, attending a Catholic academy operated by the Basilian Sisters and later completing studies at the Ringling College of Arts and Design in Sarasota, Florida, and the now-closed University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
As a young woman in her mid-20’s, she began “to depict the divine” and “the scenes of our salvation,” becoming “one of the first iconographers in North America to live fully off of her sacred creativity,” said Archbishop Gudziak.
He noted that Dochwat eschewed “a life of comfort and consumption” in a “booming” postwar America, and instead “chose a particular type of asceticism.”
“She dedicated herself to art,” he said, recalling that Dochwat heeded a childhood pastor’s exhortation to “look for God everywhere” — and then “felt the vocation not only to look for God everywhere herself, but to actually try to show God to others.”
The archbishop stressed that Dochwat’s “icons were not severe, focusing on the sinfulness of man.”
Rather, he said, “they were gentle, tender, radiating the love of God, divine mercy, beauty — the beauty of God, the beauty of the spiritual life — and inviting people into an encounter with the Lord.”
‘God’s action’ in art
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav recalled that, as Dochwat often said, “she would return in her thoughts to her native land and run through the wheat fields,” with those “vivid memories” inspiring her “to create true masterpieces of painting.”
In November 2021, Archbishop Gudziak presented Dochwat with the Order of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, the Ukrainian Catholic Church’s highest honor.
The archbishop told OSV News that Dochwat had described the moment as marking “the happiest day of her life.”
At the same time, Dochwat was known for her humility — and for keeping her eyes ever on the Lord.
The Archeparchy of Philadelphia prefaced its March 27 announcement of her death with one of Dochwat’s quotes: “What matters most to me is that my work may inspire people to pray. When people pray before an icon, it is no longer my work — it is God’s action.”
Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina.
