The 1899 wreck of the Scotsman off Belle Isle washed upon its shores a young Belgian priest who, often misunderstood and underappreciated, would go on to leave a lasting legacy in the history of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada. Narrowly escaping the fury of a three-day storm only to have the ship he sailed on crash upon the rocks off the coast of the tiny, uninhabited island north of Newfoundland, it seemed the young priest from the very beginning of his life in North America came up against tremendously difficult circumstances.
Paul Laverdure, author of Redemption and Ritual, said Achiel Delaere should be considered one of the greatest of the world's many Belgian missionaries and yet he is little known today. Father Bohdan Lukie, of St. Joseph's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Winnipeg, says Delaere is "a great hero and a saint among our Ukrainian people."
In an age where very few young men are becoming priests, it may seem incomprehensible why Achiel Delaere, born to a large and loving family, would want to leave his secure Belgian home to come to what was then an unfamiliar, underdeveloped and often frozen land.
Delaere, was born in 1868, the eighth of 13 children, in the ancient village of Lendelede, Western Flanders, Belgium. Delaere, at age 19, felt himself drawn to the missionary work of Redemptorist priests.
The Redemptorists, a congregation of the Roman Catholic Church, devoted themselves, as they do now, to serving the poor and abandoned.
Ordained at the age of 28, Delaere did not envision a future in Canada. He had volunteered for mission work in Argentina but the urgent visit of St. Boniface's Archbishop Langevin to Belgium in 1898 to plead for help with Eastern European immigrants pouring into the Prairies led to Delaere being chosen instead for Canada.
The Belgian priest was charged with setting up a monastery in Brandon. He was needed to work in the surrounding area, which had attracted immigrants who were Catholic and mostly of Slavic origins. The immigrants lacked the spiritual comfort of priests who could minister to them in their own language.
Delaere needed to learn the language himself. He was hastily sent to Galicia, which is now part of Ukraine and then under Austrian rule, but was shortly reassigned to learn Polish when it was mistakenly assumed this was the language needed most.
Rushed to Canada, Delaere set out by train for Brandon. He was sent to care for the people outside of Brandon, especially Shoal Lake and Hun's Valley where Ukrainians and Polish people from Galicia had settled.
Delaere said mass according to the Latin rite and preached in Polish but learned that most of the Galicians he encountered were Eastern rite Catholics who spoke Ukrainian. Although in union with Rome, they had remained faithful to the liturgy of their traditional Eastern rite.
The Roman Catholic Church was faced with an urgent situation. The Ukrainian-speaking Catholics longed to have priests of their own.
Delaere was sent to the Yorkton, Sask., area, where there was a huge number of Ukrainians. The Ukrainians did not trust the Belgian priest and they were convinced rightly that he was trying to convert them to the Latin rite of the Roman Catholics. Many refused to accept him.
A chapel and a monastery were built in Yorkton but Delaere realized he would be more useful as a bi-ritual priest able to celebrate mass in both Latin and Eastern rites and asked for permission to do so. Langevin eventually relented and granted Delaere permission to exercise the rite, but only temporarily.
Delaere celebrated his first Eastern rite divine liturgy on Sept. 26, 1906, in the St. Boniface bishop's chapel and owing to necessity continued to serve in the Eastern rite.
Delaere at one point was hauled out of a little church by Ukrainians and thrown off the property. They did not know Delaere had been preparing an official request for a Ukrainian Catholic bishop for Canada to help calm the threat of revolt. Langevin, at first reluctant, eventually agreed to it.
The first entirely Eastern rite community and parish had its beginnings in the basement of St. Gerard's chapel in Yorkton in 1906 and St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Church was established there by Delaere in1913.
Ukrainians still desired to have priests of their own nationality and demanded the removal of the Redemptorists. Overworked, suffering from financial difficulties, and fearing the end of their ministry here, Delaere toiled to set up more churches and soon had a nervous breakdown.
By 1930, Delaere agreed there was a need for Ukrainian priests also. But deeply discouraged by others' attempts to anglicize the Ukrainians, he left to work among the Ukrainians in Europe. There, he convinced Belgium that their mission should be joined to Galicia and he returned to Canada when this had been done. This resulted in men finally being sent from Ukraine to contribute to the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada.
Said Father Lukie, "his heart and soul was in Canada and so therefore, he returned to continue his work here and die here."
Having devoted 40 years to the Ukrainian Catholics of the Canadian Prairies, Delaere died in 1939 at age 71 from pneumonia and is considered a man of great faith and perseverance -- a Redemptorist hero by those who came after him.
SIC: WFP