Josyf Slipyj - The Shoes of The Fisherman

Slipyj's life story inspired the Australian writer Morris West's 1963 novel The Shoes of the Fisherman. West's protagonist is Kiril Pavlovich Lakota, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Lviv, who is freed by the Soviet Premier after twenty years in a Siberian labor camp. He is sent to Rome, where an elderly pope makes him a cardinal. The Pontiff dies, and Lakota finds himself elected Pope, taking the name Kiril I (a rare use of baptismal name as a papal name). The novelty of a Ukrainian pope in a post-Cuba Missile Crisis, Cold War world led to the book being featured on the New York Times Best Seller list. It was the number 1 bestseller of the entire year on the Publishers Weekly fiction list.

Hollywood's film version appeared in 1968, starring Anthony Quinn as Lakota/Kiril I and Laurence Olivier as a Soviet villain. It was nominated for two Academy Awards.

Many today regard The Shoes of the Fisherman as prophetic because it preceded by 15 years the election of Karol Józef Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II, the first Slavic pope as well as one from a Communist nation, noting even the Kiril/Karol similarity of names. However, Slipyj, the true model for the fictional protagonist, is rarely mentioned in these critical appraisals.