Achille Delaere

Achille Delaere (born 1868, Lendelede, Belgium) was a Flemish priest who served on the Canadian prairies. He was one of the founders and organizers of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, with the Byzantine-Ukrainian rite, for Ukrainian immigrants in Canada.

Biography

Achille Delaere was the son of a farmer, and since his father needed help, worked on his father's farm. As a young man Achille joined the Redemptorists in 1889 and was ordained in 1896. Growing up on a farm, ordination did not change the disposition Delaere had acquired for rough and ready circumstances. His brother was a priest teacher in Bruges. Achille Delaere was frank with people, telling them what he thought of them. Even Canada's Apostolic Delegate Andrea Cassulo learned about Delaere's frankness. Delaere once told him that only liars and scoundrels wrote to complain to the Apostolic Delegate. The Delegate replied with a smile that sometimes Bishops and Archbishops also wrote to the Apostolic Delegate.

In the summer of 1898, Father Delaere was recruited as one of three Belgian Redemptorist monks by French-Canadian Archbishop Langevin who visited the Provincial Superior of the Belgian Redemptorist province at Brussels asking for help with the large immigrant population from Eastern Europe arriving on the Canadian Prairies. Father Delaere spent a year in the Galician town of Tuchów in Galicia, learning Polish, before leaving for Canada to minister to the Polish and Ukrainian immigrants in the Brandon-Shoal Lake district of Manitoba.

He was sent to Canada on the Scotsman out of Liverpool. It wrecked off Belle Isle; sixteen people died. Delaere survived and continued his journey to Brandon, arriving October 11, 1899. He was welcomed by his fellow Redemptorists as the Apostle to the Poles.

St. Joseph's College, monastery of the Redemptorist Fathers and Ukrainian Catholic church, Yorkton, Saskatchewan, 1920.

Delaere became aware that the majority of Galicians attending his services were actually Eastern-rite Ruthenians. In the struggle between the Eastern church and the Latin church, the immigrants to whom Delaere ministered were being alienated by the unmarried Roman Catholic priests and their Latin rite. No matter how the Roman Catholic church tried to keep them in its fold, it was only a transfer to the Eastern rite that had a chance. Delaere faced increasing hostility, defections, and the lack of help from Archbishop Langevin. He established the Redemptorists' monastery in Yorkton on January 12, 1904, to care for the Galicians. It still exists, as St. Gerard's parish, a Roman Catholic parish in the Archdiocese of Regina. Finally, on March 9, 1906, Delaere obtained permission from Pope Pius X to practice the Byzantine Rite. Father Delaere celebrated Mass in the Byzantine Rite for the first time on September 26, 1906.

Unable to pronounce his name properly, the Ukrainians called Delaere: Father Dollar. John Bodrug in his memoir writes a first hand account of Delaere: "In Sifton, there had been built a small Greek Catholic Church, which was occasionally visited by Father Zaklynsky, but more often served by Father Dollar. Delaere had learned to read mass in Old Church Slavonic and he dressed according to Greek ritual, but he delivered his sermons in Polish."

As for his language skills and his knowledge of the Eastern rite, his closest associates declared that he never learned French properly and at best was mediocre in Ukrainian, but his zeal and his capacity for work made him indispensable to his superiors even though they did not care for his rustic ways.

Having been instrumental in bringing Budka into Canada, Delaere now found himself having to deal with him. There were moments of doubt, when Delaere was disconcerted by Budka's "cold neutrality", and counselled by those around him to abandon the Ukrainians in Canada, but he remained steadfast.

Father Delaere served on the Canadian prairies from the time of his arrival in 1899, for forty years, until his death in 1939.