Achille Delaere | |
---|---|
Born | April 17, 1868 Lendelede, Belgium |
Died | July 12, 1939 Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada |
Achille Delaere (born 1868, Lendelede, Belgium) was a Flemish priest who served on the Canadian prairies. He was one of the founders and organizers of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, with the Byzantine-Ukrainian rite, for Ukrainian immigrants in Canada.
Achille Delaere was the son of a farmer, and since his father needed help, worked on his father's farm. As a young man Achille joined the Redemptorists in 1889 and was ordained in 1896. Growing up on a farm, ordination did not change the disposition Delaere had acquired for rough and ready circumstances. His brother was a priest teacher in Bruges. [1] Achille Delaere was frank with people, telling them what he thought of them. Even Canada's Apostolic Delegate Andrea Cassulo learned about Delaere's frankness. Delaere once told him that only liars and scoundrels wrote to complain to the Apostolic Delegate. The Delegate replied with a smile that sometimes Bishops and Archbishops also wrote to the Apostolic Delegate. [2] : 99
In the summer of 1898, Father Delaere was recruited as one of three Belgian Redemptorist monks by French-Canadian Archbishop Langevin who visited the Provincial Superior of the Belgian Redemptorist province at Brussels asking for help with the large immigrant population from Eastern Europe arriving on the Canadian Prairies. Father Delaere spent a year in the Galician town of Tuchów in Galicia, learning Polish, before leaving for Canada to minister to the Polish and Ukrainian immigrants in the Brandon-Shoal Lake district of Manitoba. [3] : 193
He was sent to Canada on the Scotsman out of Liverpool. It wrecked off Belle Isle; sixteen people died. [4] Delaere survived and continued his journey to Brandon, arriving October 11, 1899. He was welcomed by his fellow Redemptorists as the Apostle to the Poles. [2] : 99
Around 1903, Delaere and other Redemptorists working in the Brandon area began to visit the Yorkton area once a month. Delaere himself was stunned by the amount of work required and reported that the territory was actually half the size of Belgium with only thirty to forty English families and was entirely neglected by any other Catholic clergy since the Oblates had moved out. Serafimists, Russian Orthodox priests, and Protestants had all established themselves in the area. The Redemptorists reported seventeen Protestant ministers in the Yorkton region. Delaere immediately begged for help, encouraged French Canadian seminarians to study different languages, and brought in Father Kryzhanowsky, a Basilian monk, to help him in the various colonies. [2] : 103 Father Achille Delaere also worked closely with Father Platonides Filas, the Provincial of the Basilians in Canada. [5] [6]
Delaere became aware that the majority of Galicians attending his services were actually Eastern-rite Ruthenians. In the struggle between the Eastern church and the Latin church, the immigrants to whom Delaere ministered were being alienated by the unmarried Roman Catholic priests and their Latin rite. No matter how the Roman Catholic church tried to keep them in its fold, it was only a transfer to the Eastern rite that had a chance. Delaere faced increasing hostility, defections, and the lack of help from Archbishop Langevin. He established the Redemptorists' monastery in Yorkton on January 12, 1904, to care for the Galicians. It still exists, as St. Gerard's parish, a Roman Catholic parish in the Archdiocese of Regina. Finally, on March 9, 1906, Delaere obtained permission from Pope Pius X to practice the Byzantine Rite. Father Delaere celebrated Mass in the Byzantine Rite for the first time on September 26, 1906. [2] : 104 The other Belgian priests soon followed suit. [7]
Unable to pronounce his name properly, the Ukrainians called Delaere: Father Dollar. John Bodrug in his memoir [8] writes a first hand account of Delaere: "In Sifton, there had been built a small Greek Catholic Church, which was occasionally visited by Father Zaklynsky, but more often served by Father Dollar. Delaere had learned to read mass in Old Church Slavonic and he dressed according to Greek ritual, but he delivered his sermons in Polish."
As for his language skills and his knowledge of the Eastern rite, his closest associates declared that he never learned French properly and at best was mediocre in Ukrainian, but his zeal and his capacity for work made him indispensable to his superiors even though they did not care for his rustic ways. [2] : 99
Father Nestor Dmytriw was the first to advocate for a separate Ukrainian Catholic church in Canada in 1897. In 1911, at Delaere's urging, Archbishop Langevin finally submitted to the idea of the appointment of a Ukrainian Catholic bishop, and informed the Vatican of his change of heart. "In May 1912, Delaere was summoned to confer with Pius X, and on July 15, after consulting the Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy in Galicia, Rome appointed Fr. Nykyta Budka bishop of Ukrainian Catholics in Canada." [3] : 205 At the same time Fr. Nykyta Budka was appointed Titular Bishop of Patara and was consecrated by Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky OSBM of Lviv and the co-consecrators Bishop Konstantyn Czechowicz (Eparchy of Przemyśl) and Bishop Hryhory Khomyshyn (Eparchy Stanislaviv) on 13 October 1912. [9]
Having been instrumental in bringing Budka into Canada, Delaere now found himself having to deal with him. There were moments of doubt, when Delaere was disconcerted by Budka's "cold neutrality", and counselled by those around him to abandon the Ukrainians in Canada, but he remained steadfast. [3] : 383 [10]
Father Delaere served on the Canadian prairies from the time of his arrival in 1899, for forty years, until his death in 1939.
Nestor Dmytriw was a Ukrainian Catholic priest, author and translator, born in Scherebky (Жеребки), Galicia, Austria-Hungary. Shortly after his ordination by Metropolitan bishop Sylvester Sembratovych in 1894, he came to the United States in 1895 and settled in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. In the US, he quickly became involved with missionary work and journalism through the Jersey City, New Jersey, paper Svoboda.
Dr. Joseph Oleskiw or Jósef Olesków was a Ukrainian professor of agronomy who promoted Ukrainian immigration to the Canadian prairies. His efforts helped encourage the initial wave of settlers which began the Ukrainian Canadian community.
Andrey Sheptytsky, OSBM was the Greek Catholic Archbishop of Lviv and Metropolitan of Halych from 1901 until his death in 1944. His tenure in office spanned two world wars and six political regimes: Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Soviet, Nazi German, and again Soviet.
The Archeparchy of Winnipeg is a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church ecclesiastical territory or archeparchy of the Catholic Church in Manitoba, a province of Canada. Currently, its archeparch is Lawrence Huculak.
Louis Philippe Adélard Langevin was a Canadian Oblate priest and Archbishop of Saint-Boniface. He founded the La Liberté newspaper published in Manitoba on May 20, 1913.
Stefan Ustvolsky was a Russian Orthodox priest excommunicated from the Most Holy Synod in Saint Petersburg and pretend bishop in early Ukrainian Canadian history. He called himself Bishop Seraphim, Metropolitan of the Orthodox Russian Church for the whole of America and started the All-Russian Patriarchal Orthodox Church in 1903 in Winnipeg. His claim of consecration was backed by forged documentation and the church eventually fell apart around 1908.
Nykyta Budka was a Austro-Hungarian priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church who lived and worked in Austria-Hungary, Canada, Poland, and the Soviet Union. In Canada, he is noted as the first bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada, and was the first Eastern Catholic bishop with full jurisdiction ever appointed in the New World.
Orientales omnes Ecclesias is an encyclical of Pope Pius XII to the faithful of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. It commemorates the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Union of Brest.
Saint Vladimir's is a former Ukrainian Catholic minor seminary in Roblin, Manitoba.
The Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Przemyśl–Warsaw is an ecclesiastical territory or ecclesiastical province of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church — a particular Eastern Catholic Church, that is located in the south-eastern part of Poland. It was erected in 1996. Its Byzantine Rite services are conducted in the Ukrainian language. As a metropolitan see, it has two suffragan sees: Olsztyn–Gdańsk and Wrocław-Koszalin. The incumbent ordinary of the archeparchy is Eugeniusz Popowicz. It is assisted and protected by the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches in Rome. The cathedral church of the archeparchy is the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, in the city of Przemyśl. Although the national capital of Warsaw was added to its title, there is no co-cathedral.
Byzantine Rite Christianity in Canada refers to all Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, and independent groups in Canada who use the Byzantine Rite.
Zynoviy Kovalyk was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Redemptorist priest and martyr.
The Eastern Catholic clergy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church were a hereditary tight-knit social caste that dominated Ukrainian society in Western Ukraine from the late eighteenth until the mid-twentieth centuries, following the reforms instituted by Joseph II, Emperor of Austria. Because, like their Eastern Orthodox brethren, married men in the Ukrainian Catholic Church could become priests, they were able to establish "priestly dynasties", often associated with specific regions, for many generations. Numbering approximately 2,000-2,500 by the 19th century, priestly families tended to marry within their group, constituting a tight-knit hereditary caste. In the absence of a significant culturally and politically active native nobility, and enjoying a virtual monopoly on education and wealth within western Ukrainian society, the clergy came to form that group's native aristocracy. The clergy adopted Austria's role for them as bringers of culture and education to the Ukrainian countryside. Most Ukrainian social and political movements in Austrian-controlled territory emerged or were highly influenced by the clergy themselves or by their children. This influence was so great that western Ukrainians were accused by their Polish rivals of wanting to create a theocracy in western Ukraine. The central role played by the Ukrainian clergy or their children in western Ukrainian society would weaken somewhat at the end of the nineteenth century but would continue until the Soviet Union forcibly dissolved the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Ukrainian territories in the mid-twentieth century.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church (UOGCC) is an unregistered Eastern Independent Catholic religious movement that was established by Basilian priests, predominantly from Slovakia, who schismated from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and declared the creation of the new church in 2009 based in Pidhirtsi, Ukraine.
Nicholas Charnetsky, Mykolai Charnetskyi or Mykolay Charnetsky was a member of the Redemptorists, a religious congregation in the Byzantine Rite of the Catholic Church; he is considered a martyr by the church.
Cyril Ivanovich Genik was a Ukrainian-Canadian immigration agent. He is a Person of National Historic Significance.
The Tin Can Cathedral was the first independent Ukrainian church in North America. It was the heart of the Seraphimite Church. Founded in Winnipeg, it had no affiliation with any church in Europe.
John Patrick Comiskey is a Canadian Roman Catholic priest and author in the Diocese of London. Comiskey is Moderator of the Curia and Bishop's Delegate, and assistant professor of historical theology and a former Vice-Rector at St. Peter's Seminary. The job of the bishop's delegate is to reach settlements with victims of clergy abuse on behalf of the diocese.
Michael Wiwchar is a Canadian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States and Canada. He served as the third eparch (bishop) of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saint Nicholas of Chicago from 1993 to 2000 and as the fourth eparch of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saskatoon from 2000 to 2008.
Monk Makarii Marchenko was a Russian Orthodox priest who arrived with Bishop Seraphim in Winnipeg in April 1903. He always dressed in an assortment of vestments which made him practically unidentifiable as to which church and religion he represented.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)