New eparch brings energy, vision

By Paulette MacQuarrie
Special to The B.C. Catholic

"Hello, this is the nuncio. Please call me back."

This is the message Very Rev. Kenneth Nowakowski heard on his voicemail as he sat in his car last May in Saskatoon. He had recently moved from Ottawa to serve as chancellor of the Eparchy (Diocese) of Saskatoon, and thought that Apostolic Nuncio Luigi Ventura, whom he knew quite well, was calling to catch up with him. He had no idea that when he returned the nuncio's call he would be asked to serve as Eparch of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of New Westminster.

Photos by Jeff Graham / The B.C. Catholic

"Have you been assigned yet?" the nuncio asked, to which Father Nowakowski replied, "No, my pastoral assignment is going to be in a week or so."

"Oh, that's good," said the nuncio, "because I'd like to advise you that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI would like to nominate you Eparch of New Westminster. Do you accept?"

"Yes, I'll accept; I'll gratefully accept."

On June 1 Pope Benedict XVI named Father Ken Nowakowski the third Ukrainian Eparch (Bishop) of New Westminster, and he received episcopal ordination July 24 at Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church in Vancouver.

Bishop Ken (as he likes to be called) succeeds Eparch Severian Yakymyshyn, OSBM, who had served the Eparchy since 1995.

After he had accepted his nomination, the nuncio stressed that Eparch-elect Nowakowski would have to remain silent and allow Pope Benedict to make the announcement. The days leading up to June 1, said the eparch-elect, were some of the longest days of his life.

"The first part is called The Call, and the second part is called The Great Silence. I came into my parent's house after getting the news, and my mother asked, `What's new?'"

Obviously distracted by the news, the eparch-to-be said, "Oh, nothing," to which his father replied, "You seem distant, son; is something on your mind?"

At the time of his nomination as eparch, Father Nowakowski was rector of Holy Spirit Ukrainian Catholic Seminary in Ottawa and Chancellor of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Saskatoon.

"I suppose people say, `I never thought it would happen to me,' and that is what flashed through my mind; I thought, `Wow, is this really being asked of me?'"

To say he found his appointment a surprise is somewhat of an understatement. He'd been expecting to settle into his home Eparchy of Saskatoon after spending 21 years, most of his adult life, in Europe and eastern Canada.

"I was looking forward to moving into a parish and reconnecting with my roots," he said in a statement after receiving the news. "Now I have learned that my parish will be huge, comprising all of British Columbia, the Yukon Territories, and part of the Northwest Territories."

Eparch-elect Nowakowski is thankful that he has had tremendous help from his predecessor, Eparch Yakymyshyn.

"Bishop Severian has been fabulous as a mentor, and has been very generous and kind to me, and I think one of the joys in becoming the third Bishop of New Westminster is that I'm stepping into a good eparchy, a healthy eparchy. He's been an excellent leader here."

Eparch-elect Nowakowski is approaching his new role as he has every other in the past: with energy, enthusiasm, and vision.

Kenneth Anthony Adam Nowakowski was born May 16, 1958, in North Battleford, Sask., the second of three sons born to Stan and Roma Nowakowski. Amazingly, his father actually worked as a reporter at a radio station, CJNB 1050, alongside the current chancellor for the Archdiocese of Vancouver, Father Bruce McAllister.

His older brother, Jim, remembers him as being capable and confident "whether at age 6 or 16."

"Whatever situation Ken found himself in, he'd find a way to deal with it and land on his feet," Jim Nowakowski told The B.C. Catholic. He said that "can-do" approach served his brother well as he explored his vocation and made the ultimate decision to answer the Lord's call.

When he was in Grade 12 the teenaged Ken first felt that call, but it was (he thought) to the priesthood in the Roman rite. He'd stopped attending the Ukrainian Catholic Church as he didn't understand Ukrainian or the Ukrainian liturgy. When he approached his Roman rite parish priest, he was kindly but firmly advised to approach the Ukrainian Catholic Church, in which he'd been baptized.

"I was both disappointed and at the same time relieved," said Bishop Ken. "I figured there was no way God could be calling me to be a Ukrainian Catholic priest, so I saw this as the sign to do something else if I wanted to truly follow Him."

After a year studying advertising and public relations at Grant McEwan College in Edmonton, he returned to Saskatchewan to work as the information officer for a local municipal government organization.

"My time at Grant McEwan was fabulous. That experience and education is something that I value as a priest and a bishop, because being priest and bishop has a lot to do with getting your message across."

He then took a summer job managing a fly-in fish lodge on Lake Athabasca before going backpacking across Europe and ending up in a kibbutz in Israel.

While in Rome he met Archbishop Miroslav Marousyn of the Congregation for Eastern Catholic Churches, who asked him to consider the priesthood in the Ukrainian Catholic Church. The invitation caught him off guard, but it remained with him as he explored various career options upon returning to Saskatchewan.

He soon discovered that supervising semi-trailer truck drivers was definitely not his vocation, nor was retail management. In 1980 he ended his search and answered God's call. He was accepted to Redeemer House of Studies in Toronto, operated by the Ukrainian Catholic Redemptorist Fathers. In 1984 he graduated from St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Religious Studies and Philosophy degree.

He felt the need for further reflection on his vocation, so he returned to North Battleford and a job with a non-governmental organization. During that time he became active in his local Ukrainian Catholic parish, where he realized his true calling as an eparchial Ukrainian Catholic priest.

He was accepted and sent to Rome, where he received his Bachelor of Sacred Theology from Saint Josaphat's Pontifical Ukrainian College in 1989. That same year, on Aug. 19, he was ordained a priest by Bishop Basil Filevich of the Eparchy of Saskatoon. He then returned to Rome to continue his studies.

Of course in Rome Father Nowakowski did more than study. In 1990 he was appointed vice chancellor and Chief of Staff to Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, head of the Ukrainian Catholic church.

He also established a Refugee Office. While still a seminarian in Rome, Father Nowakowski had welcomed Soviet refugees at the train station in Rome, welcoming them with Ukrainian-language Bibles and offering them help in obtaining refugee status. After he returned to Rome as a priest, he was asked by Cardinal Lubachivsky to establish an agency for the refugees.

The Refugee Office, funded by donations he raised from an aggressive letter writing campaign, provided emergency lodging, meals, clothing, and a sympathetic ear. With the changing political situation in Eastern Europe, however, the office closed in 1992.

Despite the Soviet regime's softening under Gorbachev's glasnost and its eventual collapse, that period was still somewhat precarious for the Church. By 1989 the Soviets had finally legalized the Ukrainian Catholic Church; however Cardinal Lubachivsky was still living in exile in Rome, as had his predecessors.

The Church had been driven underground in 1946, when the Soviets forcibly liquidated the Ukrainian Catholic Church. All properties were confiscated: convents, monasteries, schools, hospitals, and other Church institutions were closed, destroyed, and/or desecrated. Ukrainian Catholic bishops, hundreds of clergy, and thousands of faithful were either killed or sentenced to Siberian gulags.

Despite decades of persecution, however, the Church survived, and in fact emerged strong. Just as it once had to adapt to a clandestine existence, though, it now faced new challenges not unlike those faced by the early Church in the days of the apostles.

In 1990 the cardinal's exile ended. When Pope John Paul II granted him permission to re-establish administrative and pastoral structures in Ukraine, he invited members of his Rome staff to assist him there.

"I thought about it for about 30 seconds and said YES!" Bishop Ken recalled. "I could not think of a more exciting place to serve the Lord, seeing the Church re-emerge from the catacombs and be part of the rebirth of the Ukrainian nation."

There was much work to do in Ukraine; while chief of staff (to Cardinal Lubachivsky and later to his successor, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar) he also served in many other roles.

From 1991-1992 he served as vice rector to Bishop Julian Voronowsky, the new rector of Holy Spirit Seminary, the historic seminary of the Archeparchy (Archdiocese) of Lviv which had been closed by the Soviet authorities in 1946.

In 1994 he helped found the Ukrainian Catholic Church's official charitable organization, Caritas Ukraine, and served as its president from 1994-2001. He worked with locals to set up humanitarian aid distribution centres, soup-kitchens, an orphanage, the Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky Hospital, home-care programs, medical assistance, and disaster emergency relief. Today, Caritas Ukraine is one of Ukraine's leading organizations fighting HIV AIDS and human trafficking.

The eparch-elect hopes to develop a similar organization in his eparchy.

"I'd like the Church to show its care for anyone who is in need, regardless of their ethnic background or affiliation, if any," he said.

When Pope John Paul II made his historic visit to Ukraine in 2001, Father Nowakowski was appointed director of the press office of the Catholic Church in Ukraine. Working with the Ukrainian government and consultants, his team provided state-of-the-art technology and logistics for some 3,000 journalists covering the event.

Although away for over a decade, Father Nowakowski remained a priest of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saskatoon and always assumed he would return to Canada some day. He was right. In November 2001 he was appointed rector of Holy Spirit Seminary in Ottawa.

As in Rome and Ukraine, he wore more than one hat. In 2002 he was appointed press officer and spokesman of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada. During World Youth Day in Canada that same year he served as the Vatican accredited media personnel liaison and assistant to the press office of the Holy See.

While seminarians were off on their summer break he also provided pastoral assistance to his own Eparchy of Saskatoon as well as other Ukrainian eparchies in Canada, a task he cherished. It allowed him to remain grounded in understanding the role of a parish priest, and to share in the life of the faithful, happy times as well as sad.

In his new role as the third Eparch of New Westminster, Bishop Ken celebrated his first pontifical Divine Liturgy on July 29 at Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in New Westminster.

His immediate goals now are to get to know his clergy and the pastoral needs, strengths, gifts, and challenges of the eparchy.

"My goals as a bishop are to follow our Lord's teachings and reach out to all, proclaiming the Kingdom of God; to be the father of our Church in the Eparchy of New Westminster; and to be sensitive to the needs of our brothers and sisters who are separated from us," he said.

Given his humanitarian work in Europe and his experience guiding seminarians and working with the media, Bishop Ken has clearly demonstrated an innate understanding of what it means to be sensitive to others, whether or not they share his faith. However his approach to sensitivity is not the one of expediency or political correctness so common in mainstream society.

"We must respect the beliefs of our neighbours. However we also must not allow our beliefs to be compromised just because they are inconvenient or considered old fashioned," he said. "I believe that people look to the Church for direction and are not afraid to be given the truth, but if we as Church leaders hedge on hard questions because we are concerned that what we say will be unpopular, then how can we expect our churches to be full? What message do we give?"

Guiding the most westerly eparchy in Canada will be vastly different from anything he's done in the past.

"One of the challenges, I think, is the huge distances involved in the eparchy, in that it does take in all of B.C., the Yukon, and a sliver of the Northwest Territories. I'm planning on going up to the Yukon to visit the Ukrainian Catholics up there, find out what their needs are, and see how we can help them."

Whereas the Church in Ukraine suffered overt persecution, in Canada an atmosphere of apathy and indifference prevails, often thinly disguising outright hostility to religion, he said.

"No one cares what you believe, as long as your religious beliefs do not leave the privacy of your own home," and this problem is growing, he added. He pointed out our society's profound lack of respect for Sunday, as demonstrated by the timing of sporting events for children. He also expressed concern that many politicians who identify themselves as Catholic to secure votes will on the job undermine Christian values and Catholic Church teaching.

Proclaiming the Kingdom of God in such an environment is certainly challenging, but Bishop Ken has eagerly answered the call, and it's clear that the clergy and laity of his new eparchy will find themselves being challenged to join him in sharing the Good News with all those hungering for it.

With files from Jeff Graham.