Shevchuk calls Kuntsevych who persecuted the Orthodox "apostle of unity"

Sviatoslav Shevchuk leading the service for Kuntsevych in the Vatican. Photo: UGCC website

The head of the UGCC Sviatoslav Shevchuk on his Facebook page recalled the 400th anniversary of the death of Josaphat Kuntsevich – a Greek Catholic archbishop, who in his lifetime became "known" for exceptional cruelty in the conversion to the Union of Orthodox parishes in the territory of modern Belarus.

"The relics of our Ukrainian saint, who is honoured by the entire Catholic Church, rest today in St Basil’s side alter at St Peter's Basilica. Holy Martyr Josaphat, pray to God for us!" Shevchuk wrote after leading the service at the Vatican and added that he considered Kuntsevich "an apostle of unity".

Josaphat Kuntsevich, popularly nicknamed "Grip Kuntsevich", is known for his extremely harsh methods in "converting" Orthodox churches to the Union.

He closed all Orthodox churches in Polotsk, Vitebsk, Orsha and other cities. Kuntsevich forbade Orthodox services even in the homes of parishioners. Infants were not baptised, and the dead were not buried. The dead Orthodox were taken at night outside the city walls and thrown into the ditch with impurities. The Volyn nobleman Lavrentiy Drevinsky wrote that in Polotsk Kuntsevich, "to further annoy the townspeople, deliberately ordered to dig out of the ground Christian bodies recently buried in the church fence, and throw out of the graves to be eaten by dogs as some carrion".

The Orthodox had to perform their services secretly in the fields and forests.

On 12 November 1623, when Kuntsevich met an Orthodox priest named Ilia who was on his way out of town to perform such an illegal service, J. Kuntsevich's archdeacon Dorofei attacked him, beat him to a pulp, brought him to the bishop's house and locked him in one of the rooms. This cruelty so angered the Orthodox townspeople that they broke into Kuntsevich's house and, in all probability, hacked him to death with an axe (one of the "icons" depicts Kuntsevich with an axe in his head).

Earlier, the UOJ wrote what Josaphat Kuntsevich was.

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