... For quite a number of years the
war-cloud has hung over our country which, however, did not realise it, and it was
held off by the efforts of the peace-loving Emperor Franz Joseph I. Then
happened an incident which would exhaust the patience of the most patient of men. On
June the 28th, Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne, a man of great hopes in the present difficult moment for Austria, was assassinated in Sarajevo, together with his wife, by the bullet of a Servian
student.
This loss was greatly felt by the monarch and all nationalities of Austria, and
especially by Ruthenians, who held great and deserving hope in him. The enemies of Austria, and especially the
enemies of the Ruthenian Ukrainians, do not conceal their satisfaction on
account of this tragic loss. The
Canadian Ruthenian Ukrainians sympathise with the sorrow of our Motherland, and
give proof of it by special services in the churches for those
assassinated and in the prayer for the welfare of the maternal country. ...
—(Pastoral Letter, 27 July 1914: version printed in the Northwest Review, 8 August 1914)
