Bishop Sipovich new file

1 Alexander Nadson BISHOP CESLAUS SIPOVICH 1. The First steps Ceslaus Sipovich was born on 8 December 1914 into a farming family at Dziedzinka, a small village in the north-western corner of Belarus which at that time formed part of the Russian Empire. As the result of changes brought about by the First World War and the Russian Revolution, the territory of Belarus was partitioned in March 1921 by the Treaty of Riga between its neighbours. Its western regions came under the Polish rule, and the eastern part became the Belarusian Soviet Republic, a constituent part of the Soviet Union. It was a cynical deal which paid no regard to the interests of Belarusians. The Poles who were in a stronger position than the Soviets, but who had only recently regained their independence, were afraid of having a large ethnic minority within their borders and carved up for themselves only that portion of Belarus which they thought they could easily assimilate. In the words of the Polish politician Stanislaw Grabski, they "cut out the Belarusian abscess". The great majority of Belarusians (over 70 percent) were Orthodox, with a sizable minority (about 25 percent) Roman Catholics, most of whom lived in the western regions which after 1920 came under Polish rule. The Orthodox were mainly descendants of Catholics of Byzantine rite or, as they were known, Greek Catholics or Uniates. In 1839 the Greek Catholic Church in Belarus was suppressed by the Russian authorities and forcibly incorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church. Some of the Greek Catholics, in order to safeguard their faith, secretly managed to change their rite, thus increasing the number of Roman Catholics in Belarus. It is hard to say whether the ancestors of Ceslaus Sipovich were among them, but his parents, Vincent (1877-1957) and Jadviha, née Tychka (1890-1974) were both Catholics of Roman rite. They had eight children, of whom five – four boys and one girl, – survived, Ceslaus being the eldest. The life of a Belarusian peasant was not easy, and children were expected at an early age to start to help their parents with the farm work. Ceslaus was no exception, and from that time on, throughout his entire life, he retained a love and respect for manual labour, especially that of a farmer. According to his younger brother Peter, the decisive influence in the formation of his character was his mother. Although without any formal education, she knew how to instil in her children the love of their native language. She was endowed with a lively intellect and considerable poetical talent. Her songs and poems were learnt by others by heart, thus becoming part of local village folklore. According to the testimony of Bishop Sipovich himself, he felt an inclination towards the priesthood from early age. The inclination became firm resolution when in November 1928 he joined the "juniorate", a kind of monastic "minor seminary" for potential candidates for religious life at the monastery of the Belarusian Marian Fathers in the nearby town of Druia (pronounced "Drooia") on the river Dzvina, which marked the frontier between the Polish Republic and Latvia. The boys continued to attend school, but were subject to monastic discipline under the supervision of a priest of the Congregation, allowances being made for their age and necessity of study. The first year in the "juniorate" for Sipovich was spent in preparation for entering the High School (the so called "gimazjum") run by Marian Fathers. It was a