Courageous dreamers

“Russia has a need for apostles full of zeal like Cyril and Methodius. Our small Slovak nation is called to furnish good priests to the Russian people for so long as Russians themselves are unable to train their own clergy”, declared Father Vendelìne Javorka, the first rector of the Pontifical College ‘ Russicum’, founded in Rome by Pope Pius XI in 1929 with the aim of preparing Catholic priests of oriental rite for the apostolate in the Soviet Union, in the years of religious persecution. On the 40th anniversary of his death, the Slovak Jesuit (1882-1966) was commemorated at a recent symposium held at the “Russicum”. Arrested in 1945, during a mission in Romania, and condemned by the Soviet regime without trial to 10 years forced labour, Father Javorka was rehabilitated in 1990 by the state prosecutor’s office of the USSR as an innocent victim of the anti-religious persecutions. “A martyr of the faith”: as he was defined by the present Rector of the “Russicum” LOJZE CIKVIL . “One of those persons – added the Slovak ambassador to the Holy See DAGMAR BABCANOVA’ – who set out from Slovakia for the world and contributed to its amelioration and humanization”. THE FIRST RECTOR. “When after completing his school-leaving certificate the young Vendelìne Javorka began to reflect on his future vocation, one of his relations said to him: ‘Our nation has a need for priests who live with the people; priests who remains behind the walls of the convent are not so necessary’. Vendelìn entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 1903, but as a religious he never remained ‘behind the walls of the convent'”. That’s how Father JURAJ DOLINSKY , professor of theology at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, described the origins of his religious life. Ordained in 1915, “after the First World War, he thought, together with a small group of Jesuits in Slovakia, what road he should take: the education of the young or popular missions? Javorka opted for the second”. His first missions in his native Slovakia and in the former Yugoslavia date to 1923. Then, in 1925, he was called by the then Superior General of the Jesuits to prepare a mission among the Russian people. In the following year he worked among the Greek-Catholics in Eastern Slovakia and in Sub-Carpathian Russia. It was in that year that Pius XI took steps to establish the Pontifical College “Russicum” in Rome as a college in which future priests for the Russian apostolate would be trained. To Father Javorka was assigned the task of constructing the building and to him was given the post of Rector. SLOVAKIANS AT THE “RUSSICUM” . “As a good missionary and an ardent Slovak patriot, Fr.Javorka was able to attract a good number of his young compatriots to the ‘Russicum’ and to the Russian apostolate during the first years of the college’s existence”, recalled Father CONSTANTIN SIMON , professor of history at the Pontifical Oriental Institute. “This explains the significant presence of Slovaks among the first students. In the choice of Slovaks as the instruments of the Russian apostolate, in fact, Javorka saw the hand of Providence: the small Slovak people, grateful for the faith received from Cyril and Methodius, apostles of the Slavs, wished to assume the task of furnishing good and devout priests to the persecuted Christians in greater Russia, who were prevented from preparing their own servants of the altar”. Some of the missionaries gave their own life to the apostolate, such as Jean Andreevic Brincko Kellner, whose life was recalled at the symposium: sent on a mission to Prague, this young priest was arrested, and subsequently shot, by the Soviets as he was attempting to cross the Russian frontier from Hungary. Javorka too experienced persecution: the last stages in his life were traced: his mission to Romania, his arrest on the charge of spying for the Vatican, his condemnation without trial and his sorrowful odyssey, transferred from one forced labour camp to the next in the “Gulag archipelago” including that of Inta in the Polar Circle. THE BYZANTINE BRANCH OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS . But the fervour for the apostolate in Eastern Europe was not extinguished with the death of the first Rector of the “Russicum”. The “opening of the College and its assignment to the direction of the Jesuits in 1929 – explained Father CYRIL VASIL , pro-rector of the Pontifical oriental Institute – was significant in the history of the commitment of the Jesuits to Russia”. A step forward in this process was “the formal constitution, after the Second World War, of the Byzantine Branch of the Society of Jesus”. “In a period in which all the Catholic churches of Byzantine rite were situated on the other side of the Iron Curtain – said Fr. Cyril – the idea of going to conduct missionary work in the Soviet Union might have seemed quite absurd to an objective observer. Just for this reason, the courage and faith of a generation of Jesuits who dedicated themselves with zeal, love and sacrifice to this mission can only be admired. They were courageous dreamers who became advocates of a cause that seemed hopeless from the start”.