Belarusian Greek Catholic Church

The Christians who, through the Union of Brest (1595–96), entered full communion with the See of Rome while keeping their Byzantine liturgy in the Church Slavonic language, were at first mainly Belarusian.

The rise of Protestantism in the Grand Dutchy and the growing power of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in 1589 was erected as an independent Patriarchate, were two of the factors which led the Belarusian hierarchs to accept Union with the See of Rome.

During the Napoleonic campaign in Belarus in 1812, a large number of Belarusian parishes reverted to the Uniate rite but after the defeat of the French several bishops were deprived of their sees and a fresh policy of enforced russification was initiated.

[6] After the unsuccessful 1830–1831 November Uprising against Russian rule and the subsequent removal of the predominantly Catholic local nobility from influence in Belarusian society, the three bishops of the Church (led by Joseph Semashko), along with 21 priests,[5][7] convoked in February 1839 a synod that was held in Polatsk on 25 March 1839.

Recalcitrant priests and parish clerks were deported to monasteries and penal colonies in Northern Russia, emigrated to Austrian Galicia or chose to practise in secret the now-forbidden religion.

[citation needed] While from then on very little information about the Byzantine Catholics in Belarus could reach Rome, refugees from among them founded centres in western Europe (Paris, London and Louvain) and in parts of the United States of America, especially in Chicago.

From 1947, Leo Haroshka initiated in Paris a pastoral and cultural periodical called Bozhym Shliakham (Божым Шляхам), which was published from 1960 to the end of 1980 in London.

And in the autumn of 1989 some young intellectuals of Minsk decided to publish the periodical Unija intended to promote the rebirth of the Greek-Catholic Church.

On 11 March, he celebrated Minsk's first Divine Liturgy in the national language, and, two days later, had a meeting with the editors of Unija, the first issue of which was then printed in Latvia.

[12] September 1990 saw the registration of the first Greek-Catholic parish since the Second World War, and in early 1991 Jan Matusevich began to celebrate the liturgy in his Minsk apartment.

[14] Extrapolated to the country as a whole, this was interpreted to mean that, especially among the intelligentsia and nationally conscious youth, some 120,000 Belarusians were in favour of a rebirth of the Greek-Catholic Church.

The chief centres are the Church of St Cyril of Turau and All the Patron Saints of the Belarusian People in London and parish in Antwerp (constituted in 2003).

It was founded by John Chrysostom Tarasevich and was served by Deacon Vasili von Burman; the noted historian of the Russian Greek Catholic Church.

Christ the Redeemer was later the home parish of Uladzimir (Vladimir) Tarasevich until his death, after which it was administered by the local Latin Catholic ordinary, who appointed first Joseph Cirou and then John Mcdonnell as administrators.