Canada's first Ukrainian saint:
When loyalties collide

Recently, a national Canadian newspaper carried a feature article about the life and times of Bishop Nikita Budka who will be beatified a martyr by the Pope during his visit to Ukraine.  As such Canadian Catholics will enroll Budka as their first Ukrainian Canadian  saint.  Bishop Budka was certainly a controversial figure who, by his actions, angered Canadian war veterans, the Manitoba and Canadian governments, members of his own flock and even the Vatican itself.  Was he really all that bad or was he a convenient scapegoat?

Ukrainians began to arrive in Canada in the early 1890's.  Bishop Nikita Budka, a man with a promising academic and church career, was sent to Canada to organize the Ukrainian Catholic Church here.

Nikita Budka may not have been in possession of the best possible public relations skills. But he had an iron will and was completely loyal to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Pope, his Ukrainian land, not all in that order.

His Papalist and Monarchist convictions were also celebrated in the Liturgy of the Ukrainian Catholic Church of his time.  Both Pope and Emperor were frequently commemorated throughout!

In Nikita Budka's world, there was a definite and unshakeable hierarchy for society.  He, for one, would support it at all costs, costs that he would, in time, be obliged to pay and pay dearly.

Just prior to Canada's entry into the First World War, Budka, wrote a missive letter to his Canada-wide Ukrainian flock asking any who owed military service to the Emperor to make every effort to return home to fulfill their obligations.  He was concerned with the fate of Ukrainian Galicia and its Greek Catholic Church before the onslaught of Russia's armies.  The letter would prove to be the start of his endless troubles and problems while in Canada.

A few days later, Canada did enter the war and Bishop Budka hurriedly penned another missive letter asking his Ukrainian flock to disregard the first one and be loyal citizens to Canada.

But this was too late.

Budka was openly attacked from many quarters, including Ukrainian ones, as a traitor to Canada.  Manitoba's Liberal Provincial Administration was most adamant about having him deported.  He was arrested and charged several times.  Following the war, veterans laid eleven charges against him which the court threw out for lack of evidence.

In addition to having his work as Bishop severely hampered because of all this tumult, the Canadian government decided to intern Ukrainians as suspicious and potentially treacherous foreigners living in Canada.  Budka's letter was and has been often used as the "excuse" for Canada's actions with respect to its Ukrainian citizens in this regard.

However, and as Professor Dr. Hryniuk of Winnipeg has pointed out, the internment would occurred anyway, given the then attitude of the Canadian government toward Ukrainian Canadians.

Ukrainian Churches were often attacked by hooligans and this during the Liturgy with rocks thrown through windows etc.

In addition, what has been called Bishop Budka's uncompromising attitude on church matters and his strict "top-down" approach alienated Ukrainian Canadian Catholics, a number of whom began a Ukrainian Orthodox Church movement to leave Rome and the Unia.

Overworked and tired, Bishop Budka laid the foundations for the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada nevertheless.  He travelled for miles through the prairies on horseback and on foot.  Financial problems were a constant worry and the Vatican investigated his administration of his Canadian charge when he returned to Rome in 1927 under a cloud from Canada.

The man who could get himself and his community into so much trouble was also a man who could stay up all night with a Ukrainian sentenced to hang, minister to him and then walk with him to the gallows.

The fact remains that although Bishop Budka was charged and tried several times, but never convicted of anything by any court. 

He tended to draw fire on himself at a time when Ukrainians in general were suffering government-sponsored persecution and discrimination throughout North America.

As such, modern scholars see him more as a scapegoat for racist government actions such as the World War I internment of Ukrainians.  His original letter in this regard should be seen against the backdrop of his own Ukrainian patriotism.

Arriving back home at Lviv, he stayed there until the coming of the Soviet armies in 1945.  At that point, he was arrested and sent to the Soviet camps in Kazakhstan.

He died a martyr for his faith and church.  The communists left Bishop Budka's lifeless body in the woods for the animals.

A man of few friends in life, Budka is being hailed today as the Father of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada and the U.S., including the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholics. 

In the historical reassessment of his times, his objective innocence of all charges against him is being brought out against the backdrop of the rampant racism contained in both Canada's then immigration policies and subsequent treatment of groups like the Ukrainians.

The fact that the Pope has not seen fit to exclude Bishop Budka given the Bishop's personal investigation by the Vatican itself can almost be seen to be a kind of apology offered to his memory from a Pope known for his apologies.

That Canada's Catholics would welcome Budka into their own Roman Rite choir of saints as the first non-English, non-French or non-Native member speaks well to the health of Canadian multiculturalism and religious pluralism.

Louis Riel, a convicted and executed traitor to Canada was rehabilitated by the Canadian government that put him on the gallows, even to the point of proclaiming an annual "Louis Riel Day." 

Perhaps the Manitoba government could do something similar (a monument perhaps) for the man it once wanted deported from Canada on charges that were never proven in court in the midst of a general and hysterical anti-Ukrainian feeling it did nothing to abate at the time. 

A human being who made mistakes, Budka was maligned for his cultural and religious identity.  

Budka's beatification could be the start of a rectification of history, long overdue.  Now it is the time for the Canadian government to follow in the Pope's footsteps and make similar repentant gestures toward this man and the people he tried to serve so single-mindedly amidst the depressing horror of societal discrimination and ethnic injustice.

Dr. Alexander Roman  alex@unicorne.org