Turning the pages back...

December 1, 1956

It was 50 years ago that The Weekly reported on the appointment of Canada's first Ukrainian Catholic metropolitan.

On November 18, 1956, by Vatican decree, as announced by the papal nuncio in Ottawa, Bishop Maxim Hermaniuk of Winnipeg took ecclesiastical command of 500 Ukrainian Canadian parishes. Bishop Hermaniuk was the first metropolitan in the Ukrainian Catholic Church ever to hold this high office outside of Ukraine. Several Orthodox metropolitans in various national groups had already been appointed, but this was a first for a Catholic Metropolitan.

In addition to the new metropolitan, serving the needs of Ukrainian Canadian Catholics were the Bishop Isidore Borecky, eparch of eastern Canada; Bishop Andrew Roborecky of Saskatoon, eparch of Saskatchewan; and Bishop Neil Savaryn of Edmonton, eparch of western Canada.

Metropolitan Hermaniuk joined the Redemptorist order in 1933 and was ordained in 1938. He studied at Louvain University, Belgium, where earned a doctorate in theology in 1943. He arrived in Canada in 1948 and took up duties as supervisor of the Ukrainian Redemptorist Vice-Province of Canada and the United States. He taught at the Ukrainian Redemptorist Seminary in Waterford, Ontario, where he founded and edited the theological journal Logos.

He was consecrated bishop and named as auxiliary bishop of Winnipeg in 1951, serving under Archbishop Vasyl Ladyka of Winnipeg until he was appointed Metropolitan.

Source: "Most Reverend Maxim Hermaniuk appointed first Ukrainian metropolitan in Canada," The Ukrainian Weekly, December 1, 1956.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, November 26, 2006, No. 48, Vol. LXXIV

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