Eastern Catholic victims of Soviet persecutions

Two months after his election on May 12, 1939, in Singolari Animi, a papal letter to the Sacred Congregation of the Oriental Church, Pius XII reported again the persecutions of the Catholic faith in the Soviet Union.

Three weeks later, while honouring the memory of Saint Vladimir on the 950th anniversary of his baptism, he welcomed Ruthenian priests and bishops and members of the Russian colony in Rome, and prayed for those who suffer in their country, awaiting with their tears the hour of the coming of the Lord.

[1] After World War II, the Russian Orthodox Church was given some freedom by the atheist government of Joseph Stalin, which held to the doctrine of Marxist–Leninist atheism.

After much of the area was added to Poland, which follows the Latin rite, Polonisation and significant problems for all Orthodox and Uniate Christians developed.

[2][3] Some Ruthenians, resisting Polonisation, felt deserted by the Vatican and returned to the Russian Orthodox Church during the Pontificate of Pope Pius XI.

Josyf Slipyj, Gregory Chomysyn, John Laysevkyi, Nicolas Carneckyi, Josaphat Kocylovskyi Some, including Bishop Nicetas Budka perished in Siberia.

[12] After the war, the Catholic Uniate churches were integrated under the Moscow Patriarchy, after all residing bishops and apostolic administrators were arrested on March 6, 1946.

Pope Pius XII presents a comprehensive historical review of the reunion, to show the many trials and bloody persecutions but also the advantages of the union to the faithful in Ukraine.

[14] At Saint Josaphat College he mourns the terrible changes of the past twenty years in Russia, bishops incarcerated, in concentration camps, banned from their homes, killed while in jail, for one reason only, they are faithful to the Holy See.

Pope Pius XII mentions the naming of an Oriental Cardinal Grégoire-Pierre Agagianian, and the reform of the Eastern Canon Law as two examples.

[17] The Pope concludes by requesting worldwide public prayers for the persecuted, and hopes that they may open the jails and loosen the chains in those countries.

The slow pace of de-Stalinisation and the Soviet crackdown on the Hungarian Revolution did not produce results, aside from modest improvements in Poland and Yugoslavia after 1956.