Los Angeles in the late 1970s, when I was in High School, was an interesting place in some ways, and deadly dull in others. As a young lad I sought colour and the picturesque in a place burned dull brown by the sun, where even the Faith — in its lacklustre liturgy and catechesis of the era — rather than being a refuge was a key part of that dullness, at least in parish and school. As mentioned in our last outing, my parents were a great exception to this, as was my “accidental” confessor, Cardinal McIntyre. His Eminence in turn introduced me to the Anglo-Catholics of St. Mary of the Angels, Hollywood, who in turn introduced me to another man who would play a major role in my formation: Fr. Feodor Wilcock, S.J., then pastor of St. Andrew’s Russian Catholic Church, El Segundo.
Both in New York, whence we came to Los Angeles, and in our new home, my family and I had always known some White Russians — survivors of the Civil War against the Communists after the Revolution of 1917. So, I grew up with a certain knowledge of and interest in in Russian and Byzantine culture. But these were all Russian Orthodox. The discovery of Russian Catholicism in particular and Eastern Catholicism in general was a revelation to me — but so too was Fr. Wilcock himself.
Father was the last of his branch of the Wilcocks — and old recusant Catholic family in Lancashire who had kept the Faith under Henry and Elizabeth and all subsequent reigns, down to 1906, when the then Frederick Wilcock was born in Blackburn. He was sent to the Jesuit school at Stoneyhurst. The young man discovered his Jesuit vocation there. He entered the Jesuits in 1924; but five years later he answered another call. Thanks to the effectiveness of the KGB, the native-born Russian Byzantine Catholic priests were all either dead or in the Gulag. So it was that Pope Pius XI asked for volunteers to be trained in Russian ways and sent into likely death or prison. Fr. Wilcock volunteered and entered the Russicum in Rome in 1929.
Ordained in 1934, he was sent into the Soviet Union with an American companion. They were caught within weeks. The American priest went to the Gulag and died there; since Stalin was trying to curry favour with the British at that time, Fr. Wilcock was simply banished. He was then sent to work with Russian refugees, first in Czechoslovakia and then in Poland. With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the Jesuits sent him to look after their Russian Catholic Church and School in Shanghai, China, then a centre of White Russian emigration. But after Japan declared war on Great Britain in 1941 and occupied the International Settlement, he was sent to an internment camp, of the sort made familiar by Empire of the Sun. The end of the war in 1945 allowed him to resume his pastoral work, but the Communist seizure of Shanghai in 1949 forced the evacuation of priest and people to the Philippine Island of Tubabao, part of a total number of 6000 Russians brought there. The following year he was brought by the Jesuits to Boston, to teach at Boston College; he was the only one of that Jesuit community to show any support to Fr. Leonard Feeney, S.J. at that time. From 1952 to 1954 he served at Our Lady of Fatima Russian Catholic Church in San Francisco; he was then recalled to Fordham University and founded the Russian Studies Centre. In 1956, he was sent to work in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where a large number of his former Shanghai parishioners had settled. In 1965, he was sent back to Fordham to teach; when, in 1972, he went out to El Segundo to offer the funeral liturgy of the newly deceased pastor, he discovered that half the congregation had been with him in Shanghai. They petitioned his superiors to assign him to St. Andrew’s, and their wish was granted. Five years later, I visited his church for the first time.
Then and now, St. Andrew’s was a wonder to the five senses. The iconostasis was and is incredibly beautiful, as are all the icons. Much of the Liturgy was invisible, but the chant and the incense seized one’s attention. Communion was under both kinds, spooned into one’s mouth. It took a little getting used to — but about it all was a reverence and solemnity that was quite alien to the Catholic world of the 1970s — as I knew it.
Fr. Wilcock himself, as his short biography reveals, was a very urbane, carefree-seeming fellow, with a strong British accent and definite joie de vivre — all the more striking, given the miserable events he had endured from time to time. Extremely cosmopolitan, he was multilingual, and a had fund of funny stories and reminiscences. Although about half the congregation were Russian then, there were Chinese and Western refugees from the liturgical ruin of the era. As a result, his parishioners constantly filled his refrigerator with a multinational array of culinary delights — which he happily unloaded on visitors to his rectory — regardless of the time — with a cheery, “I could never possibly eat all of this myself!”
As it happened, Cardinal Manning made him head of the Archdiocesan Ecumenical Commission. This was due to his any experiences with various varieties of Eastern Orthodoxy. But Fr. Wilcock was careful never to compromise the Church’s teaching on being the One True Church — all the while charming the many clerical dissidents from that belief in various denominations. Closer to his personal interests was an organisation called “The Fellowship of St. James of Jerusalem,” which brought together various Catholic priests with clerics claiming the Apostolic Succession. A number of these were Eastern Orthodox, Armenian and Coptic Orthodox, and Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians (the latter of whom tended to claim the “Dutch Touch” — i.e., valid orders from the Dutch Old Catholics); his co-chairman was an interesting priest working simultaneously with the Polish National Catholic and Episcopal Churches (in Communion until the latter adopted women’s ordination), named Enoch Jones. But the most exotic birds in this garden were a few Episcopi Vagantes.
This fascinating if bizarre tribe is made up primarily of men who have obtained — usually — valid episcopal orders from one of about five sources. There were at that time about 200 in the Los Angeles area, and at Fr. Wilcock’s request I set out to catalogue them — interviewing perhaps 50 by the time I was done. They were an amazing array of sincere folk, charlatans, perverts, and ex-Catholic or Orthodox clerics who had been damaged in one way or another by their former Churches. Each of the devoted among them had his own singular vision of what “true” Catholicism/Orthodoxy should be. Some would set up wedding chapels — thus causing difficulties for the Church in dealing with couples who though they had received valid marriages, which pastoral concern was the main reason for the catalogue.
The lesson to be learned from all of this was that while inside the Church there is horror, confusion, and abuse, there is also Salvation and sanity; outside, it is not so. Fr. Wilcock yearned with all his heart for an end to the Schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism — not simply because he loved the East and Russia, although he did, but because he sought dearly the Salvation of Souls, the lifelong pursuit of which had made even the hard times of his life worthwhile.
As a pastor, Fr. Wilcock offered the Byzantine Liturgy as correctly and painstakingly as he could. He loved to hear confessions and visit the sick and dying. For most of his tenure, the parish sponsored an annual Russian street festival, which was a yearly highlight for the usually sedate suburb of El Segundo. The music, dancing, and food brought visitors from miles around to the sleepy little town, and was a major fundraiser for the parish. His reputation spread sufficiently that he, the choir, and the church featured briefly in the 1980 film, The Black Marble.
Fr. Wilcock died at age 78 on January 25, 1985 — truly mourned by all who knew him. The future of the parish, given the shortage of Russian rite priests, was very much in doubt — it survived, but 12 years woud pass before St. Andrew’s had a permanent pastor one more. It was a great personal loss to me, as he had taken on the role of my Confessor after Cardinal McIntyre died in 1979. Ecumenical relations in the Archdiocese went in a much less…er…orthodox…direction.
But St. Andrew’s survives as a tribute to him, and those of us who knew him shall never forget. Certainly all that I learned from him regarding the Eastern churches, in and out of communion with the Holy See, has stood me in good stead — and never more than now, when at least half of my friends and colleagues here in Austria are Byzantine Rite. May his vision and that of Vladimir Soloviev, of a renewed Union of Florence, be realised one day soon.
