Agapius Honcharenko

I escaped from a Moscow prison to the wide world because I felt free blood in my veins.

Agapius Honcharenko

Agapius Honcharenko was a church, public figure, publicist, publisher and Ukrainian Orthodox priest in the United States.

His birth name was Andrii Humnytsky. He was born into a priest’s family. When he was tonsured, he took the name Agapius. While studying and serving as a monk in Kyiv, he met Panteleimon Kulish and Mykhailo Drahomanov and became fascinated by the work of Taras Shevchenko.

Because of his Ukrainophile views, the tsarist regime sent Agapius to serve in the embassy church in Athens and later issued an order for his arrest. However, his friends helped Agapius escape arrest and travel to London by steamship. Since then, he has taken the surname Honcharenko.

While living in London, Agapius was published in emigrant Russian newspapers and became known as a human rights activist. In 1865, he arrived in the United States. Here, he served as an Orthodox priest, founded a library, published the Alaska Herald newspaper in English and Russian and  subtitled Svoboda (Freedom) with articles in English, Russian and Ukrainian. He popularized knowledge of the history and present-day Ukraine among Americans and translated Shevchenko’s poems into English. He founded the Ukrainian Brotherhood agricultural cooperative in California.

Until his death, he was respected by his fellow countrymen, who called him “father.” He called himself a “Cossack in a cassock.” He published a book of memoirs, concluding: “My Motherland Ukraine and the source of the Cossacks, like a phoenix, will rise for the good of people, for eternal truth and freedom.”