EDITORIAL: In memoriam (05/19/96)

EDITORIAL

In memoriam

In the Catholic Church, Archbishop-Metropolitan Emeritus Maxim Hermaniuk will be remembered as the "father of ecumenism." In Ukraine and the diaspora, Maxim Hermaniuk leaves a substantial legacy in defending human rights and freedoms. Although he lived three-quarters of his life outside his native Ukraine, the former Ukrainian Catholic archbishop of Winnipeg left part of his psyche behind.

Following World War II, while studying post-graduate theology at Belgium's University of Louvain, Metropolitan Hermaniuk helped organize the social and religious rehabilitation of displaced Ukrainians living in Belgium. As the Soviets placed the Ukrainian Catholic Church into a Communist sarcophagus, the scholarly Re-demptorist priest also found himself among the displaced group with whom he was working. Unable to return to his native western Ukraine, the future bishop became active in the Belgian Ukrainian community. He helped establish a Ukrainian newspaper, served as editor of a Ukrainian monthly magazine for Western Europe and became chaplain to the Louvain Ukrainian Students' Movement.

In 1948, Metropolitan Hermaniuk was appointed vice-provincial superior of the Ukrainian-rite Redemptorists in Canada and the United States. Based in Waterford, Ontario, he launched Logos, a Ukrainian-language theological journal, two years later. But Archbishop Hermaniuk's editorial career with - and the publication itself - lasted only one year, until he was named auxiliary bishop to his predecessor, Basilian Archbishop Basil Ladyka of Winnipeg. (Archbishop Hermaniuk revived Logos following his retirement.)

As bishop, and later as archbishop-metropolitan when he succeeded Archbishop Ladyka in 1957, Archbishop Hermaniuk remained active in the Ukrainian Canadian community. Through the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the World Congress of Ukrainians, Archbishop Hermaniuk promoted the multicultural visibility of Canada's Ukrainian community and used his church role to defend the religious and civil rights of Ukrainians back home.

As Bishop-designate Stefan Soroka of the Archeparchy of Winnipeg recently told The Winnipeg Free Press, "[Archbishop Hermaniuk] always reminded the Church outside of the martyrdom of the people [in Ukraine's] underground, pursuing their faith. When they couldn't speak up he spoke up for them." So loudly, in fact, that he secured an invitation for himself and 14 of his fellow Ukrainian Catholic prelates to attend the Second Vatican Council - the largest contingent from that branch of Eastern Catholicism to be greeted by the pope in more than five centuries.

In many ways, Archbishop Hermaniuk bested the Soviet clamp on the Ukrainian Catholic Church when he successfully led a campaign to secure the release of future Cardinal Josyf Slipyj from exile in 1963 - to live in the Vatican at the invitation of Pope John XXIII. But while some of his brother bishops pressed the Holy See to officially recognize the patriarchal title Archbishop-Major Slipyj himself used, Metropolitan Hermaniuk chose to avoid rocking the diplomatic boat with Rome.

He was awarded the Order of Canada, Manitoba's highest decoration - the Order of the Buffalo Hunt as well as citations from the UCC's Shevchenko Foundation, the annual Manitoba Catholic Caritas Award and the Osvita Foundation's yearly prize.

In 1989, he returned to Ukraine after a 51-year absence. Accompanied by his future successor, Archbishop-Metropolitan Michael Bzdel, Archbishop Hermaniuk confronted a yet-to-be-independent country still creeping through post-Stalinism. Nevertheless, he was struck by the intense faith of Ukrainians, like "that of the first Christians - some of them my schoolmates [who] went to prisons, concentration camps, and faced torture and starvation for their faith."

The former Ukrainian Catholic metropolitan returned to Ukraine several times following his 1989 return - helping to feed the hunger felt by both clergy and laity. Archbishop Hermaniuk finally brought to them the good news from the Second Vatican Council and fulfilled a promise to Ukrainians he made three years ago once he entered retirement: "I will be here for you any time, anywhere and in any way."

Maxim Hermaniuk kept his word.

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