The Metropolitan Andrzej Szeptycki has become the leader of the Greek Catholic Church in the most difficult period of the Polish-Ukrainian relations. When he began his service as the archbishop, he assured that he respected the Poles. However, despite the mild beginnings, his politics were anti-Polish. Both during the Ukrainian- Polish war of Eastern Galicia in 1918 and during the World War II massacre of the Poles by the Ukrainian chauvinists in Volhynia and Eastern Małopolska, he behaved more like a politician than a priest. When first the archbishop Jozef Bilczewski and then the archbishop Boleslaw Twardowski asked him to try to stop the murders on Polish civilians, he pretended he did not know what was going on. Sometimes he acted as though he had forgotten that his major task was to preach the Gospel and in result the political interests of the Ukrainians were more important to him. Instead of attempting to unite the Poles and the Ukrainians, he supported Ukrainian nationalists in their fights with Poland. His approach led to a serious chilling of his relations with Polish bishops.