Bishop Sipovich new file

22 Testament when they sold him into slavery in Egypt 18 . Another author who defended Druia was the Jesuit Jan Urban in his Oriens 19 . Incidentally both Uladzislau Talochka and Adam Stankievich were expelled from Vilna in December 1938. In addition Talochka was threatened by Archbishop Jalbrzykowski with ecclesiastical censures and forbidden to write for newspapers. As diocesan priests they remained in the territory of the Vilna diocese in places outside the frontier zone, Stankievich in Slonim and Talochka in Bialystok. The "pogrom" against the Belarusians was not limited to Vilna province. In the Navahradak province the young Belarusian Greek Catholic priest, Leo Haroshka, was expelled from the frontier town of Stoupcy. The lay associates of Father Stankievich fared still worse. The head of the F. Skaryna Printing press and editor of the youth journal Shliakh moladzi Jazep Najdziuk, the editor of the journal Kalossie Jan Shutovich, Victor Iermalkovich and others were arrested late in August 1939 and sent to the notorious Bereza Kartuzka prison camp. Fortunately their sufferings did not last long. On 1 September 1939 the war broke out and a little more than two weeks later the Polish Republic ceased to exist. In his unfinished manuscript life of Andrew Tsikota, Ceslaus Sipovich wrote: "How empty would be the renaissance of our national life, if there had been no Belarusian monastery, which radiated holiness, industry, and deeper understanding of Christianity in all its aspects – moral, ascetic and psychological – for all Belarusians to see. It was in order to fill this empty place that Father Andrej Tsikota founded in very unfavourable circumstances in Druia on the Dzvina a Belarusian monastery of Marian fathers and brothers" 20 . Further on he continued: "The Druia monastery, when there were assembled together Fr Fabian Abrantovich, a scholar, a profound philosopher, and at the same time a simple and generous man; Fr Joseph Hermanovich, a poet, writer, educator of youth; Fr Vitalis Khamionak, apostle of the people who knew every hamlet and every inhabitant in the Druia parish and was considered by the people a saint; Fr Dashuta, Doctor of Canon Law, a devotee of liturgical chant, – when all these fathers, under the leadership of Tsikota, began to work together in the monastery, in the parish and in the school, not only Druia, but the whole of Western Belarus became conscious of the existence of a Belarusian religious centre" 21 . The above passages, written by Sipovich in 1972, give an idealised picture of Druia and its importance in Belarusian religious and national life in the 1920s and 30s. Unfortunately the reality was quite different. Whatever the intentions of its founders were, they were never fully realised. The main reason was the hostility of the Polish authorities who saw in Druia an obstacle to the polonisation of the Belarusian Catholic population. With a few notable exceptions, the Polish ecclesiastical authorities and clergy were no better. Even Polish Marian Fathers disliked the idea of a Belarusian religious house. When Blessed George Matulewicz was still alive, he tried to calm their spirits, assuring them that Druia was no threat to Poland. His successor, Buchys, had no sympathy with the Polish point of view, but 18 P. Kontryba, "Poklosie nagonki na Marianøw w Drui", Przegl≤d Wilenski , No.4-5, Wilno 1938, pp.5-6 19 P. Urban, "Monachomachia w Druji", Oriens , Vol.6, No.4, 1938, Warsaw, pp. 118-120 20 Ceslaus Sipovich, Archimandryt Andrej Cikota, p.22. A manuscript life of Cikota, written in 1972, is preserved in the Francis Skaryna Library. 21 Ibid ., p.31