Cardinal Husar leads funeral services for Toronto's first Ukrainian Catholic eparch (08/17/03)

Cardinal Husar leads funeral services for Toronto's first Ukrainian Catholic eparch

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj

TORONTO - On the warm but rainy afternoon of July 26, the first bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Toronto and Eastern Canada, Isidore Borecky, was laid to rest in a family plot at the Mount Peace Cemetery in Mississauga, closing a long and eventful first chapter in the eparchy's history.

Over the course of the previous three days, an estimated 1,200 mourners paid their last respects to a man hailed as a builder, a patron and an active supporter of the Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchate.

As fate would have it, the current primate of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, archbishop major of Lviv, was on hand to officiate at Bishop Borecky's funeral at Mississauga's Church of the Holy Dormition, and delivered the funeral oration. The hierarch had traveled to Toronto for the ordination of the latest of Bishop Borecky's successors, the Rev. Stephen Chmilar, which took place on the very day of the founding bishop's death in a Toronto hospital on July 23.

To capitalize on the presence of the assembled Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy, the final rites for the influential bishop began the following evening, with an episcopal parastas held at St. Nicholas Church in Toronto. Before the service, attended by about 250 faithful, Cardinal Husar paid his personal respects to his longtime synodal colleague and offered condolences to the man's family.

The Rev. Lev Chayka, Ukrainian Catholic dean of Northern Québec, delivered a eulogy, in which he praised the deceased for his role as a builder of the Church in Canada and a patriot of Ukraine.

For the second parastas on July 25, about 100 more mourners squeezed into St. Josaphat's Cathedral, despite its smaller capacity. Bishop Basil Filewich of Saskatoon delivered the eulogy, in which he spoke of his earliest meetings with the late eparch in the early 1940s, when both were priests in Ontario's Niagara region, and mentioned that, as fate would have it, Bishop Isidore appointed him as his successor to serve the parish of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in St. Catharines in 1948.

Bishop Filewich highlighted Bishop Borecky's efforts to ensure that immigrants were sponsored out of the Displaced Persons camps in western Europe. The late clergyman's concerns were not without their personal connotations, as he also eased the passage westward of his own brother, Volodymyr, and much later, several decades after the war, his mother, Yulia, who had been prevented from emigrating in the 1940s.

The pontifical funeral liturgy was celebrated on July 26 at the Holy Dormition Church in Mississauga by Cardinal Husar assisted by bishops and clergy. The Ukrainian Youth Ensemble Choir, conducted by Andrij Burak, sang the liturgy in its Ukrainian Old Church Slavonic variant.

The newly ordained eparch of Toronto and Eastern Canada, Bishop Chmilar, read a message from the Vatican. Pope John Paul II, the man whose authority Bishop Borecky flouted in the 1990s, delegated the duty of writing the missive to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Holy See's secretary of state. Cardinal Sodano conveyed the Pontiff's "fervent prayers that God the Father of Mercies reward this zealous bishop and faithful pastor of souls for his long years of service to the Church" and condolences to the clergy and faithful who mourn his passing.

Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, archbishop of Toronto's Roman Catholic Archdiocese, offered his sympathies to the hierarchs, clergy and faithful of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in person. He pointed out that the departed "was a bishop long before I became priest" (he was ordained in 1955). He said he found Bishop Borecky's contributions to and participation in diocesan bishop's meetings very instructive, and credited the deceased with a strong influence on his thinking.

Archbishop Yurij Kalishchuk of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada also addressed the congregation, praising the late bishop for the leadership under which all the Ukrainian Catholic institutions presently operating in the Toronto Eparchy were established.

The Orthodox prelate said Bishop Borecky's influence reached beyond the sphere of his own Church's activities in that he was a great patron of the Ukrainian arts in all of their forms. Drawing on his personal experience, Archbishop Yurij recognized Bishop Borecky's unwavering support of choral singing (liturgical and secular), and particularly of the Ukrainian Millennium Foundation's successful effort to record the 35 sacred choral concertos of Dmytro Bortniansky and averred that, without this aid, it would not have been possible.

Archbishop Yurij also fondly recalled the many years of personal friendship and ecumenical cooperation with Bishop Borecky. He conveyed the heartfelt condolences of his superior, the Metropolitan of Canada and Archbishop of Winnipeg Wasyly Fedak, and those of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Canada, Archbishop Sotirios.

The main funeral oration was delivered by Cardinal Husar, who invoked the memory of his predecessors, the late Patriarch Josyf Slipyj and Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, and in their names recognized and thanked Bishop Borecky for the "solid and reliable support" for them and for the institution that they represented "in the darkest and most difficult periods of our Church's history."

"I am confident," Cardinal Husar continued, "that he rendered a service not only to them as individuals ... but also made a lasting contribution to the good of our Church."

"The departed showed leadership and courage," said the primate, "in defense of the recognition of our Patriarchate, and was equally firm in his commitment to the civic cause of Ukrainian consciousness and identity, and the religious cause of close contact with our Church, particularly in the diaspora."

Cardinal Husar referred to the three days of extensive services as opportunities to immerse oneself "in beautiful, euphonious and deeply meaningful prayers" by which Bishop Borecky was being remembered, and his soul urged heavenward: "We were not in the auditoriums of a university, or concert halls - we were in the presence of the mortal remains of a man who but a week earlier was alive; a man who, three to five years ago, was still fully active; a man who, 20 years ago, was a vigorous leader of our Church; a man who, 50 years ago, was an energetic and eager young bishop who had already accomplished much in building his eparchy, and was to accomplish still more."

After the conclusion of the service, the cardinal led a procession around the Holy Dormition Church as a light rain began to fall. Several priests of the Toronto Eparchy served as Bishop Borecky's pall bearers as his coffin was conveyed to its final resting place at the nearby Mount Peace Cemetery.

A wake was held in the Holy Dormition Church hall to which all mourners were invited, and at which the Rev. Dr. Petro Galadza acted as the master of ceremonies.

Among those who spoke in an official capacity were the former president of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians (now the Ukrainian World Congress) Yuri Shymko; the president of the World Federation of Ukrainian Women's Organizations, Maria Szkambara; the president of the Toronto Branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Markian Szwec; the Rev. Evtimy Wolinsky, hegumen of the Studite Fathers of Canada; Tamara Woloszczuk, the chairperson of the Toronto eparchial executive of the League of Ukrainian Catholic Women; Yaroslav Sokolyk, who spoke on behalf of the Brotherhood of Ukrainian Catholics of Canada; and the Rev. Dr. Andrij Onuferko, the acting director of the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at St. Paul's University in Ottawa.

Two less formal addresses were nonetheless significant. Irena Kravets, a recent immigrant from Ukraine and currently an assistant principal at a local Ukrainian Saturday school, expressed her gratitude on behalf of her family and of the latest wave of arrivals to the late bishop (and those active in his chancery) for their petitions to various levels of government and moral support.

Irene Galadza, the spouse of the Rev. Roman Galadza, pastor of St. Elias Parish in Brampton, Ontario, spoke on behalf of the more than 80 wives of priests and deacons currently active in the eparchy. Ms. Galadza said her family emigrated from the United States to Toronto because of the knowledge that Bishop Borecky was receptive to ordaining married men as priests.

Ms. Galadza's husband later told The Weekly that, as a measure of the late hierarch's influence, the number of married clergy in the eparchy has never dipped below 60 percent of the total during his tenure. The Rev. Galadza also pointed out that three main altar servers at Bishop Borecky's funeral were children of local clergy.

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