His Eminence, Mykola Bychok, CSsR (44) is a Ukrainian Catholic who serves as Eparch of Ss. Peter & Paul of Melbourne since 2020. On December 7 he will become the Church’s youngest cardinal.

The arms he assumed upon becoming a bishop were designed by others for him and he was not entirely satisfied with them. With his upcoming creation as a cardinal he saw this as an opportunity to tweak the design of his coat of arms.

The redesigned coat of arms does not depart that much from what he originally had but cleans it up a bit and adds the external ornament unique to Cardinals.

The blazon is: Tierced in pall; in chief, Gules a rose Argent, barbed and seeded Or between three bezants; in dexter base Azure a trident (tryzub) topped with a Greek cross, all Or; in sinister base Or a Latin cross on a perch of a staff topped by a sponge in bend and a spear in sinister bend all Azure. The shield is ensigned with the galero of a cardinal of the holy Roman Church with cords and 30 tassels disposed in five rows of one, two, three, four and five all Gules; the whole within a mantle Gules lined ermine surmounted by the Eastern mitra Gules; in saltire behind the mantle a crozier and a cross both Or.

The charges in chief symbolize the place he is from; the trident (differenced by the addition of a cross) is a symbol of Ukraine; the cross, sponge and spear are borrowed from the arms of the Redemptorist Order of which he is a member.

I was very happy to consult on this redesign and work to put it together with Mr. Richard d’Apice of the Australian Heraldry Society. As with all our collaborations the artwork has been deftly provided by Mr. Sandy Turnbull, also of the Australian Heraldry Society.