George Matulaitis Journal

207 become nationally conscious, they would eventually come to resent the Church if it attempted to suppress their national identity. 5) We should also try to approach the Orthodox Belorussians and former Uniates, but we can reach them only by preaching the word of God in Belorussian. The Belorussian priests should see this as their duty and their vocation. I agreed to let Father Cikoto go to Mi<sk and appointed Father Drabas to take his place. Father ÷ uk, 1 a Belorussian from Lebedziewo, told me about his impov- erished and difficult situation. The real pastor, Father Zapasznyk, is ill, I think with tuberculosis, and unable to work. However, he still lives in the rectory and controls the property and finances of the parish. Father ÷ uk does all the parish work and lives on the estate in a farmhand’s hut, and now the Bolshevik committee has thrown him out of there as well. They have robbed him and left him homeless. I begged him to put up with it as well as he could. Right now, nothing much can be done—such are the times. He asked if later on I would transfer him somewhere else because the Orthodox Belorussians are very angry with him. I promised to do so. Then he asked me if he could teach the children in Belorussian, since they do not understand any other language. He asked about this because in the past it was not allowed. Priests who dared teach the children in Belorussian were punished and transferred to Polish parishes. He also wanted to know if he could use Belorussian when he taught religion in the schools. I could not see how it could be done otherwise. Then he asked if he might preach in Belorussian. I replied: “I leave this to your own discretion. But kindly take care that there are no riots in church and that the Polish parishioners also get their due.” All the people go to confession in Belorussian. Once and for all we have to settle this matter of the Belorussian language. Imagine acting in such an uncatholic way. This problem he understood only in the light of the unjust behavior and persecution practiced by the Russians. They refused to recognize the Belorussian language. To them it was merely a dialect, while the real Belorussian language had to be Russian. They would not allow anyone to speak Belorussian, only Russian. To keep the Russian language out of the 1 Another of the younger Belorussian priests trying to carry out his pastoral ministry and faced with a difficult problem: using the language of the people meant risking ecclesiastical censure. The town of Lebedziewo was mostly Belorussian; Southeast of Vilnius, it had once been Lithuanian. It had a Roman Catholic and an Orthodox Church.