6. London

The Lithuanians have their own parish in London. Their parish church of Saint Casimir was founded before the First World War. It is situated at the Oval, Hackney, which was considered one of the poorest parts of London. Since 1934 the Lithuanian Marian fathers had been in charge of the parish and the church. That is where Father Sipovich stayed during his first year in London. The rector of the church at that time was Father John Sakievicius, whom Sipovich knew from Rome.

The Belarusian community in Great Britain consisted for the most part of members of the Polish Armed Forces awaiting demobilisation. Some of them were in the 1st Polish Corps which was stationed in Britain during the war, but the bulk arrived in 1946 from Italy with the 2nd Polish Corps. There were also a few civilians, mainly students. Soon the ranks of Belarusians were increased by arrival of so-called "displaced persons", i. e. people who as result of the war found themselves in Germany and for political reasons were unable to return to their native country. The economic conditions in post-war Germany were not suitable for permanent settlement, so most of those people tried to emigrate, mainly overseas, to the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina. Some of them remained in Europe. The main countries which accepted displaced persons were France and Great Britain, the latter under the name of  "European Volunteer Workers"(EVW). The new arrivals had to undertake the employment (in most cases manual labour) which was selected for them by the Ministry of Labour, and which they were not allowed to change without the express permission of that Ministry. In 1951 this restriction on employment was raised for those EVWs who had by then been three years in Great Britain. Initially they were housed in hostels, managed by the Ministry of Labour. These were usually were ex-army camps which were standing empty.

In London Father Sipovich was greeted by many friends and acquaintances from Italy. One of his first acts was to join the Association of Belarusians in Great Britain. At that time it was a well established and growing organisation. It held its first general meeting on 18-19 January 1947, at which the Council was elected, with its founders Vincent Zhuk-Hryshkievich and Victor Siankievich as chairman and secretary respectively. Since November 1946 the Association had been publishing its paper Na shliakhu (On the way). It also launched an appeal to collect funds to acquire a house of its own. In the meantime it enjoyed the hospitality of the Ukrainian Association which had just acquired a property at 49 Linden Gardens in the Notting Hill district of London.

The main problem for Father Sipovich, after he had paid visits to the Archbishop of Westminster and the Apostolic Delegate to present his credentials and obtain the necessary permission for pastoral work, was to find somewhere to hold regular services for the Belarusian community. The Lithuanian church was too far from where most Belarusians lived and not easily accessible by public transport. The Ukrainian priest, Father Jean, had similar problems. On Sunday 13 April, which was Easter according to the Julian ("old") calendar, the two priests celebrated the Liturgy together in the conference room of the Ukrainian House at Linden Gardens. The next day Father Sipovich celebrated the Liturgy alone and preached the sermon in Belarusian. A more or less permanent solution was not found till two months later, when the Oratorian fathers at Brompton Road in South Kensington offered him the use of their Little Oratory for regular services. It so happened that within walking distance from the Oratory there was a hostel where many demobbed Belarusians were living. Most of them were Orthodox. A few days before the first liturgy Father Sipovich spent an evening with them. He wrote in his diary: "12.6.47. 12.15 a.m. Just  came back from the N.S. Hostel, 50 Onslow Square, South Kensington. Talked with the boys about the need of unity among Belarusians. A few, hostile to my mission, did not come to the meeting. Thank God for everything. There is hope to start services, but one must act very cautiously and sensibly. Saint Peter, help me!"

Three days later there is the following entry: "15.6.47. My first Liturgy at the Brompton Oratory took place. There were about 15 persons present... I preached the sermon 'On the need of prayer'... After lunch there was a meeting of Belarusians at Linden Gardens. Mr Babik had an interesting talk about life in Soviet Belarus in 1920s and 30s... Mr Bulak (vice-chairman of the Belarusian Association – A.N.) tells me in confidence that the Orthodox priests are not pleased with my activity".

The priests in question belonged to the Polish Orthodox Church. Some of them had served as chaplains in the Polish army during the war, others arrived from Germany as EVWs and worked in factories. Many of these priests were Belarusian by origin but took no part in the life of the Belarusian community. Their superior was Archbishop Sava (Sovetov), a former Russian imperial army officer who after the First World War embraced the monastic life and became a bishop in the Polish Orthodox Church. During the Second World War he was chief Orthodox chaplain in the Polish army with the rank of general. As emigres, he and his priests remained nominally in charge of a flock, whose views and national aspirations they did not share. Obviously they looked with suspicion at a young and energetic Catholic "Uniate" priest who from the day of his arrival was accepted as part of the Belarusian community.

Incidentally Father Sipovich, soon after his arrival, on 3 May 1947, paid a visit to Sava who, as he noted in his diary, received him politely.

Having settled the problem of the place of worship in London, Father Sipovich began visits to the hostels of European Voluntary Workers in search of Belarusians. The first visit on 5-6 July was to Bedhampton near Havant in Hampshire, where among various ethnic groups he found 20 Belarusians. On 13 August it was the turn of Market Harborough near Leicester. Then came Newark, Horsforth near Leeds and others. Usually the visits took place at weekends, with a Liturgy on the Sunday. After Liturgy there would be a meeting, at which Father Sipovich informed those present about Belarusian life in London, invited them to join the Association of Belarusians in Great Britain and form a local branch of this organisation. Incidentally, Father Sipovich, through the medium of the Apostolic Delegate in Great Britain, asked the Ministry of Labour to give him official permission to visit Belarusians in the EVW camps. The answer came on 21 July 1947, stating that the Ministry had no record of any workers of Belarusian origin in their hostels. The reason was that soon after the war, in accordance to the agreement between the Western powers and Soviet authorities, all refugees in Germany from the Soviet Union were due for deportation. Belarusians fell into this category. In fact a number of them was deported against their will to the Soviet Union where they ended up in prison camps. To avoid this fate many Belarusians hid their true nationality and declared themselves Poles, Latvians or Lithuanians. It was under this assumed nationality that they had come to Britain.

In London, in addition to his pastoral duties, Father Sipovich was active in the Association of Belarusians. He worked closely with Dr Zhuk-Hryshkievich, especially in the matter of representing Belarusians in dealings with the British authorities and various institutions, as well as in contacts with other refugee organisations (Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Czech etc.). Sometimes things became hectic as in mid-July, when Mikola Abramtchyk, President of the Belarusian National Council in Exile, visited London for the first time. Here is the entry in the diary: "13.VII.47. Sunday service at Brompton Oratory. About 30 people present... At 2 p.m. the conference of President M. Abramtchyk at Linden Gardens, and about 8 p.m. – evening in memory of Ianka Kupala (arguably the greatest Belarusian poet who died, probably murdered by the Soviet secret police, in 1942 – A.N.)... Everything was fine and pleasant, but tiring".

In 1948 various East European national associations formed the Central Coordinating Committee of Refugee Welfare Organisations (CCCRWO). Its chief aim was to represent the needs and defend the rights of the European Volunteer Workers (EVW) vis-a-vis the British authorities, help solve difficulties arising from restrictions on the choice of employment and the compulsory two-year contract etc. Father Sipovich represented the Association of Belarusians on this Committee from its beginning till 1960.

In the meantime Father Haroshka in Paris had organised a parish, established contacts with Belarusian communities in other places and launched a religious journal calledd Bozhym shliakham (On God's way). The first issue appeared in October 1947. Initially practically all the material was written by Father Haroshka under various pen-names. But from the third issue Father Sipovich became a regular contibutor to the journal. Other contributors followed, and Bozhym shliakham became one of the best and most serious Belarusian religious and cultural publications.

About the same time, in a letter dated 27 October 1947 the Apostolic Delegate informed Father Sipovich of the permission of the Oriental Congregation for his work to be called "Mission to the Catholic Whiteruthenians (i.e. Belarusians – A. N.) of the Byzantine Rite in England". Then the letter continued: "As there is not at the present moment in England a Russian Catholic priest of Byzantine Rite, you have the authority to concern yourself, practically, and pending other instructions, with Russians". Thus 27 October 1947 can be considered the official date of the establishment of the Belarusian Catholic Mission of the Byzantine Rite in England. It was, after France, the second officially established Belarusian Mission. The pastoral care of Russian Catholics was entrusted to Sipovich without his ever having asked for it. Nevertheless he did what he could, giving spiritual assistance to those who were in need of it, which was after all his duty as a priest. Despite his limited involvement with Russians, Sipovich succeeded in acquiring among them a few valuable friends. One of them was Count George Benningsen, a Russian aristocrat of Swedish origin, a modest and good man, and a convinced Catholic. He had left Russia soon after the end of the First World War and the establishment of Soviet Communist rule in that country, and settled permamently in London. There he was one of the first members of the Society of Saint John Chrysostom, founded in London in 1926 with the aim of making Eastern Christianity known among English-speaking Catholics. Benningsen helped Father Sipovich with advice and valuable contacts. Incidentally it was he who arranged the meeting with Archbishop Sava. Later both men worked together for many years in the Central Coordinating Committee of Refugee Welfare Organisations.

Among other acquaintances at that early period mention should be made of Anne Christich, a Serbian Catholic (her mother was Irish) who had been active since the 1920s in the field of Christian Unity. She became a staunch friend and supporter of Father Sipovich.

But there were clouds gathering on the horizon. They came from Germany, where the bulk of Belarusian refugees was still living in the refugee camps. Among them were bishops of the Belarusian Orthodox Church who had escaped from the Soviets. During the German occupation in 1942, at a Synod in Minsk, the independence, or autocephaly, of Belarusian Orthodox Church had been proclaimed. The bishops, most of whom were Russians, agreed to this independence unwillingly, under pressure from the nationally conscious faithful. In emigration, free from that pressure, in 1946 they joined the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile. In the confusion caused by their defection the Belarusian Orthodox community was split into two camps of those who remained faithful to the bishops, and those who refused to follow them.

The other division was on political grounds. Initially Belarusians in exile had one political representation in the form of the Council (Rada) of the Belarusian National Republic (abbreviated as  BNR) which claimed continuity from the original Council set up in 1918, when Belarus was proclaimed independent. That independence was short-lived, and the Council went into exile, where it had remained ever since. Its centre after the war became Paris, where the Council's president, Mikola Abramtchyk, lived. The right of the BNR to represent Belarusians was contested by the Belarusian Central Council (Rada), or BCR, a body set up in Minsk with the consent of Germans towards the end of 1943. The President of the BCR was Radaslau Astrouski. He and the whole BCR left Belarus together with the Germans in the first days of July 1944. After the war he kept quiet for some time, but emerged again on the Belarusian political scene towards the end of 1947, when the "cold war" between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union began to warm up.

Among the BNR supporters there were people of different religious persuasions: Orthodox, Catholics, Evangelicals (Baptists) and even Muslims (Belarusian Tatars). It was the Orthodox of this group who, with the help of the Ukrainians, in 1948 succeeded in restoring the Belarusian Autocephalous Church. The BCR supporters, who were almost exclusively Orthodox, did not recognise this church. In this their position was no different from that of the former Belarusian bishops who defected to the Russian Expatriate ("zarubezhnaia") Orthodox Church. For this reason they were nicknamed by their opponents "zarubezhniki" or "expatriates". On the other hand the BCR supporters called the others "kryvichy", from the name of the largest of the three East Slavic tribes which formed the basis of the Belarusian nation. Some Belarusian authors suggested that, in order to avoid to be confused with Russians,  Belarusians should adopt "kryvichy" as their national name. This suggestion, which might have been an interesting subject for academic discussion, had never been taken seriously by the majority of Belarusians. But the nickname stuck.

The first signs of division in the Belarusian community in Great Britain began to show towards the end of 1947. They manifested themselves first of all in the change of attitude of certain members of the Association of Belarusians. The final break came on 2 May 1948 at the  Annual General Meeting, when a group of members, all supporters of the BCR, walked out. It was a heavy blow for the Association. Eventually it recovered and continued its work. But the harm was done, and, although some of those who walked out eventually came back, the former unity of the Belarusian community was lost.

Two months before those events, in March 1948, the supporters of the BCR founded their own organisation called "United Christian Whiteruthenian Workers in Great Britain", and began publishing the journal Abjednannie (Union), in which they attacked the management of the Association of Belarusians, targeting in particular Dr Vincent Zhuk-Hryshkievich and Father Ceslaus Sipovich. For the latter this was the first taste of the difficulties which lay ahead of him. It saddened him to see how the attitude of people could change overnight from friendly to hostile.

About the same time Father Sipovich suffered another setback. On 10 January 1948 he gave an interview to a correspondent of the Catholic weekly paper Catholic Herald F.A. Fulford. Sipovich's English was limited at that time, and he, as he later admitted to friends, spoke part of the time in Italian, hoping that the correspondent who knew some Spanish would understand him... He remained pleased with the interview until, on Friday 16 January, he saw on the first page of the Catholic Herald an article "by a Staff Correspondent" with the sensational title "The Pope Has Sent A Russian Priest Here to Convert the Orthodox". The article began thus: "Fr Sipovich is in London at the desire of the Pope to convert some 1,000 Russians in this country. He wants English Catholics to help him". And then a little further down: "Romance attaches to Fr Sipovich's arrival here; he is part of the efficient machinery set up by the late Pope Pius XI to tackle the Russian question, and which the present Pope is developing through the now famous Russicum  college in Rome...". Father Sipovich took it very hard. He wrote in his diary on the same day: "I received 100 copies of Catholic Herald, in which there is my photo and an article with the sad title: 'The Pope has sent a Russian priest here to Convert the Orthodox'. I am very upset because what is written there about my national identity does not correspond to the truth, and (because of) many other mistakes. I never thought that the Catholic Herald would print an article about me without letting me see it first. This is the greatest cross God has sent me since I came to England. Only God's providence can now put things right again. He is my only hope."

On 30 January the Catholic Herald printed Father Sipovich's reply, in which he tried to correct the false impression created by the article. Among other things he wrote: "...As regards conversion, both of Whiterutenians and other people, the policy of the Holy See is well known. Much as is desired the reunion of all Christians in one fold, cheap proselytism has always been condemned... I am not a Russian, but a Whiteruthenian (Byelorussian) priest of Byzantine Slavonic Rite, and I have been sent here to work for Byelorussians, and certainly not to force my ministry upon Byelorussians and Russians."

Unfortunately, as often happens in similar cases, many people who read the article might not have noticed Father Sipovich's reply, tucked away among other letters to the editor. Others ignored it deliberately, as did the editors of Abjednannie who printed Fulford's article in full in Belarusian translation under the title "Who is Father Sipovich and why did he come to London"[30], conveniently forgetting to mention Father Sipovich's reply.

The unexpected result of the article in the Catholic Herald was that many English Catholics who were interested in Eastern Christianity heard for the first time about Father Sipovich. Thus on the next day after the publication of the article, on 17 January he received a telegram from Cambridge inviting him to come to celebrate the liturgy and give a talk to a group of University students about Eastern Christianity. Two days later he received a letter from Donald Attwater (1892-1977), a well known author of several books on Eastern Christianity. On the same day he met Dom Bede Winslow (1888-1959), a Benedictine monk from Ramsgate, founder and editor of the Eastern Churches Quarterly... Other contacts followed, culminating on 6 May in the splendid gift of vestments for a Byzantine priest and deacon, chalice, paten and all furnishings for the Byzantine chapel.

The gift came just in time: two days later Father Sipovich moved to the place which was to become his residence for the rest of his life.

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