YAKOV KROTOV

Greek Catholic Project: Past and Present

Here goes an interesting archive material: article from the magazine Western Jesuit, San Francisco, Felton O'Toole, S.J., Editor, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, September 1958, pp. 5-19.

What I can add. It is sad to read this article, because we know that the "jesuit project" was closed by the Vatican in mid-1960-s. This was done under the pretext of "improving relations with Russian Orthodoxy." It was most hypocritical pretext! Hierarchy of the Roman Church continues to look upon Orthodox Christianity as a second-sort Christianity. "Ecumenical" context was used to return to the medieval position, when Eastern "schismatics" were treated as unworthy of any attempts to convert them. to communicate them, not to mention embracing their "rite."

It is a weak consolation to see that some Roman Catholic Christians on the grass-root level enjoy Russian Orthodoxy, come to Russia with donations etc. Sometimes they demonstate another extreme: they think that Russian Orthodoxy is so perfect that we don't need any reforms, we are much better than "Western Christianity." Such people look on Russian Orthodox as the followers of New Age on Castaneda and other religious charlatans.

Oh, yes, and certainly the author of the article is mystaken: Kruschev never new even the name of Fr. Urusov, I guess. This is one of there myths which surround any totalitarian regime.

RUSSIANS MISSION TO THE RUSSIANS

By The Editor

MR. KRUSCHCHEV has his problems -- and his fears. This consoling bit of information leaked out of an Embassy party in Moscow sometime last year. Mr. K., brooding over a drink, was suddenly asked: "Who in the western world do you consider as most dangerous to your regime?" The names he rattled off held but one surprise -- Andrei Urusov, Russian Jesuit.

What Nikita Kruschchev had in mind in singling out Father Urusov could have been his family background (his parents were purged by Bolsheviks in 1917), and his heroic work for Russian refugees in half a dozen countries.

It could have been his one-man war against atheistic communism carried on in articles, in radio and TV appearances in the U S. and Canada, and in more than a thousand lectures, some of which were delivered to the top-brass in the Pentagon.

But more than any of these, Mr. Kruschchev saw in Father Urusov a symbol of the Resistance Movement that he and his kind can expect from the Church and from the Russian Mission within the Church of which Father Urusov is a member.

What is this Resistance Movement that places a Russian Jesuit high on the list of Westerners "most dangerous to the Kruschchev regime?"

It was in 1928 that Pope Pius XI called for volunteers to train for an eventual apostolate inside Russia. Priests and seminarians from various Orders -- Jesuits, Dominicans, Capuchins, Benedictines and Redemptorists -- as well as diocesan priests responded to the call. The famous Russian College (Russicum) was opened in Rome and placed under the direction of the Jesuits. For priests other than those of Russian or Slav descent there was the problem of language to be surmounted. There was also the necessity of transferring from the Roman to the Byzantine Rite of the Eastern Catholic Church. Progress was slow, but the whole policy for the Russian Mission was necessarily a long range one. Even in 1928, the Iron Curtain had existed for priests and religious workers. There was a trickle of priests of the Russian Mission into Poland and Esthonia, into France and Austria -- into any part of Europe where there was a fairly heavy concentration of Russian people. And their influence was being felt.

With the outbreak of World War II, American, English and Russian Jesuits shifted their activities to the colony of 30,000 Russians in Shanghai, most of whom lived in the French Concession. There was also a hope of eventually working among the 80,000 Russians concentrated in Harbiri, Manchuria.

A parish and a boarding school for Russian boys soon flourished in Shanghai. A splendid school for Russian girls was under the direction of the Irish Columban Sisters.

Although the war and internment in Japanese concentration camps halted the work of the Russian Mission, it was soon resumed. By 1949 the staff included English Jesuits, Fathers Wilcock and Brannigan, the American Jesuit, Father Meyers, and Russian Jesuit Fathers Urusov and Bock. The latter, a grand old man, had been, during the Czarist Regime, the last acting Minister for Russia to the Vatican. His conversion and vocation to the priesthood was in part a result of his close personal friendship with the present Holy Father.

When the Communists approached Shanghai early in 1949, most of the Russians managed to escape. Since the work of the Russian Mission was at an end there, new fields had to be found. Father Wilcock and Father Urusov were assigned to accompany a group of some sixty five hundred Russians who were seeking refuge in the Philippine Islands. The story of those days -- living on a small island in jungle shacks abandoned by the U. S. Army, the critical illness of Father Urusov, and the slow resettlement of Russians in Australia, the United States, Paraguay and France -- is a moving one.

Today, almost ten years later, the work of the Russian Mission is still going strong. The activity of the "Shanghai" group is now being carried on in the United States. Perhaps their proudest work is the establishment of The Russian Center at New York's Fordham University. There, books in Russian and in English are produced on a variety of Russian topics; lectures are given on the Eastern rites; relief work is carried on for Russian DP's. It is also, of course, a Catholic center of information on the Russian Apostolate.

On the Pacific Coast, the work begun in 1939 by Father Ryder, an English Jesuit who had previously worked with the Russians in Esthonia, was later divided between Father Urusov in San Francisco and Father Brannigan in El Segundo, a suburb of Los Angeles. Both Jesuits had worked in Shanghai and both had for some time been attached to the Russian Center in New York. Apart from that, their backgrounds were as different as possible. Father Urusov, born in Moscow the son of a Tartar Prince, was orphaned at an early age, educated at various places in Europe, became a convert in 1935 and was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1946. Father Fionan Brannigan, a Londoner, studied Mining Engineering at London University and later, as a Jesuit, spent four years at Munich University working for a doctorate in German Philology. During the war, he headed the Modern Languages department at Wimbledon College in London. After completing his work at the Russian College in Rome he was assigned to Shanghai.

People who drop in to Father Urusov's Russian Center in San Francisco or who visit Father Brannigan's neat, white church in El Segundo, sometimes ask: "What exactly are you accomplishing in your work?" Put just this way, the question generally means: "How many converts are you making?" or "Is your chapel or church overflowing every Sunday?" The man who demands tangible results is probably shocked to learn that the purpose of the Russian Mission is not proselytism. Nor can one reasonably expect to find an overflow congregation on Sunday. Although there are almost 20,000 Russians in the San Francisco area, for example, only a small percent of these give allegiance to the Eastern Catholic Church.

What is the purpose of the Russian Mission? As Father Brannigan puts it: "The purpose of the Russian Mission (Church) is to let the Russian people know that it is a visible sign that there is a spiritual home for them within the security and universality of the Roman Catholic Church." Another purpose, of course, is to make the Roman Catholics of this country conscious of the existence and importance of the Byzantine rite of the Eastern Catholic Church. "When the liberation of Russia comes," Father Ryder says, "Westerners from the U. S. and other nations will enter upon the business of re-indoctrination and rehabilitation. For them to be ignorant of the Byzantine religious traditions of Russia or to insist on Western (Roman) forms of worship would constitute a grave cause for confusion."

Strange to say, it was just this adherence to the Byzantine rite that caused the biggest headaches to Jesuits of the Russian Mission in this country. For some Catholics who had been brought up in the Roman rite and who had only the vaguest ideas as to the extent and meaning of the "universal" Church, there seemed to be something suspect, something not fully Catholic, about these bearded priests whose Mass bore so little external resemblance to the Mass they had known and loved all their lives.

It was an extremely embarrassing and difficult position to be in. It did little good, says Father Brannigan, to say: "Look here, there are over 20 different rites in the Church. The Eastern half of Christianity has always had different liturgical customs and laws from those of Rome. It is not a matter of merely tolerating these rites. Rather, the Holy See insists that they be preserved in all their purity. Wasn't it Benedict XV who said: 'The Church is not Latin, or Greek or Slav; it is Catholic'." But the breakthrough (proryv) was really accomplished when more and more people began to attend the Byzantine Mass; when they witnessed it at school or college or on special occasions at their parish church. However exotic it appeared at first sight, the Mass of the Byzantine rite was seen in all its haunting beauty to be the same, true Eucharistic Sacrifice. Only the external ceremonies and prayers were different. Wherever and whenever this has happened there has grown up a new spirit of sympathy and understanding for the priests whose daily Mass is the Byzantine Mass.

The Russian Mission has been called one of the most difficult missions in the modern world. It may well be. There are no immediate results to speak of. Rather, it is a continual preparation -- a waiting for that moment in God's Providence when everything they are and all the accumulated experiences of the years can be devoted to the redemption of the spiritual and social horror that Russia now is.

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