As a youth, he had been brought up in a village where the Marian Fathers staffed the local parish. The experience had left him with a lifelong respect and admiration for the Marian Fathers. And so Fr. George, along with his friend Fr. Francis-Peter Bucys, who had also grown up with Marian religious influence, entered the Marian institute with the intention of saving it from disappearing into history, along with all its promise for God's work. They had to become Marians in secret in order to thwart Imperial Russian authorities, who continued to persecute the Church.