Maxim MAURITSSON is a Greek-Catholic retired priest form Stockholm. He will turn 85 in December, though he looks about 70. When they wish him to live to be 100, he jokes saying that we should not limit God; maybe He wants him to live to be 110… In general, Maxim jokes a lot. When he was first filling in the documents to get the Ukrainian visa, his answer to the question: “How long are you going to be in Kyiv?” was “Until I die and afterwards.” He has been here for 17 years now. Invited by the famed bishop Sophron (Mudry), he taught theology in the Ivano-Frankivsk Theological Seminary, iconography in the Kyiv Mohyla Academy and Scandinavian languages in the universities of Kyiv, Odesa and Zaporizhia. (He knows about 50 languages and speaks 10 of them fluently.) He finds the foreign investors for the domestic funds dealing with the improvement health of Chornobyl children, children from large families and orphans. He helps the dean of the Askoldova Mohyla Cathedral father Ihor Onyshkevych keep the homeless adolescents…
He is the co-founder of the university publishing house Pulsary that issued the following intellectual bestsellers: Spohady Ikara [Icarus’ Memoirs. – Ed.] by Serge Lifar, The Decalogue by Frantz Gengsbach, Do Dzvonkovoi Krynytsi [To the Dzvonkova Well. – Ed.] by Oles Honchar, Dumky Narozkhryst [The Open-Hearted Thoughts. – Ed.] by Pavlo Zahrebelny, Do Efektyvnykh Suspilstv: Dorohovkazy Na Maibutnie [To the Efficient Societies: Guides to the Future. – Ed.] by Bohdan Havrylyshyn, Ave, Europa! by Oksana Pachlovska, etc. By the way, the Kyiv apartment where Mauritsson lives could hardly house 8,000 of his books, though he had given some of them to the libraries of the Ivano-Frankivsk Theological Seminary and the Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
Father Maxim Mauritsson’s favorite phrase is “God always forgives, people sometimes forgive and nature never forgives.”
Why have you chosen Ukraine?
“Because of Poltava (laughing).”
Seriously, what is the reason for you, a pureblooded Swede, to become the patriot of Ukraine?
“It all started when I first wrote about the Ukrainians for the Vatican edition L’Osservatore Romano (The Roman Observer) after World War II. I studied theology in Rome. I knew a lot of languages and was invited to translate the news from the Dutch, Hungarian, Polish and Ukrainian sources for the edition. I found out that I had been the first [to write about the Ukrainians. – Ed.] in 1947 when the Lviv Assistant Bishop Ivan Buchko offered me to become the pastor of the Scandinavian Greek-Catholics who numbered about half a thousand there. He told me that in the 1930s when the Vatican newspaper informed about the Pope’s general audience with a group of Ukrainians the Polish ambassador in Vatican got outraged and said that they were not Ukrainians but Malopolaks. [Halychyna was a part of the Polish territory till 1939. – Ed.] Later this information was disclaimed and they wrote nothing about the Ukrainians since then.”
And then?
“I got deeply interested in the Ukrainian history and culture. One cannot be a good pastor for those who they do not know. I was amazed when I found out that during Yaroslav Mudry’s rule there was a girls’ school in Kyiv! Later, during the Middle Ages the Syrian monk Paul Allepo wrote after visiting our country that in Ukraine even children and elderly people can write whereas in Europe it was the privilege of priests only. The first books were printed here in the 15th century. The first tram in the Russian Empire was launched in Kyiv in 1892! The first illuminated street in the Russian Empire was Khreshchatyk! Who knows about this in Europe? You should have advertised your country just after you gained independence. When I contacted several tourist agencies in Sweden, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy all of them politely informed me that Ukraine was not in the list of countries they cooperate with.”
When did you come here first? Do you remember your first impressions?
“I once stopped at a subway entry in Stockholm to listen to musicians play. They played professionally. (I can professionally play piano and organ.) I understood that it was the music of some East European country. The musicians turned out to be the Ukrainians. I wanted to help them and organized concerts at some Lutheran churches. I once joked saying that I also could give concerts in Donetsk and Odesa where the musicians were from. No sooner said than done. I played in the abovementioned cities and in Sumy where a Roman-Catholic nun worked. The following day, just after the concert I went to the nearest Donetsk hospital to buy something they needed. It was 1994 and they needed just everything!
“My first impressions… The poverty. But it did not scare me. I knew the Ukrainians to be nation with the high culture (by the way, then the culture was financed on leftovers, just like now). I knew how much you had to go through, especially during the 20th century. Since over the several last decades I often ran into Ukrainians I gradually realized that God wants my place to be here. I got added evidence of this with the time.”
Have you ever thought of being a Roman-Catholic or a Greek-Catholic priest somewhere in the Western Europe?
“You mean I would have had the calm old age? I do as the Pope Pius XII said: here we work and will have rest in heaven! I do not have holidays not because I do not have opportunities. I just do not feel the need to go on holiday somewhere. I travel a lot for charitable causes. There are a lot of sick and poor children abroad, too, but the states have mostly provided various social programs in order to teach and treat them... In Sweden the medical services are free. In Ukraine they are also free, according to the Constitution, but you know the reality.
“I am often asked where I get my strength from. From vitamins. (Laughing.) Seriously, of course, I get it from God. By the way, I am never depressed. Even if I fail to do something. I understand that we want our plans to realize at once but God has his own calendar. I am just a servant of God.
“I can tell you as a doctor [Maxim Mauritsson had worked as a doctor and taught medicine to the Sweden students before he got the theological education and was ordained priest. – Ed.]” that there are two kinds of stress: the inside (when people let all the negative information go inside) and the outside one (when people resist the negative emotions). So I have only the outside stress.”
You have been living here for 17 years now. What can you tell about the Ukrainians and our national character?
“You are very kind people. Notice that the Ukrainians have never unleashed wars. They mostly fought defending themselves unlike Russia. By the way, in Moscow they are now editing a multivolume set The Philosophy of War. It seems to me that they have already published the first volume.
“Moreover, the Ukrainians mostly believe in God. The Russian Orthodox Church has 12,800 parishes in Russia whereas the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at Moscow Patriarchate has 15,000 parishes in Ukraine where there are the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at the Kyiv Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church. As compared to Western Europe, the Ukrainian society has not been affected by the secularization yet [the process when the society strays from the church and religion. – Ed.]. On Sunday I can see a lot of young people in churches of various confessions whereas the churches in France, Spain and Italy are mainly attended by elderly people.
“I have already told you that I became a fan of Ukraine when I learnt about its great culture. What is more, the Ukrainians also have the high culture of everyday life. By the way, there were no prisons here until introduced by Peter the First… The problem is that you do not imagine yourself abroad. However, an average foreigner thinks that Russia stretches from the Baltic to the Black Sea. That is why some encyclopedias and exhibitions present the Kyiv Cave Monastery as the first Russian monastery or the Sophia Kyivska as the first Russian cathedral in Kyiv… You should show some muscle and defend yourself! And never lose courage despite that our independence does not have the Ukrainian spirit. One more thing. As Metropolitan Andrii Sheptytsky said, being killed in a battle or losing one’s faith (usually, the atmosphere is favorable in both cases) is easier than doing minor constructive things every day: building houses, backing bread, rising children or treating the sick is much more difficult… And loving each other is yet more difficult!”
P.S. After the interview I had an impression that the people like Father Maxim Mauritsson are the “salt of the earth” (this is how The New Testament describes the true Christians) unlike the merciless and cynical people… “Yes, but there are not enough of them to make our society balanced,” one might reply. Obviously, such people are rare. But every of them is worth a dozen.
