During the spring of 1923, Archbishop Cieplak, his Vicar General [Monsignor Konstanty] Budkiewicz, Byzantine Catholic Exarch Leonid Feodorov, fourteen other priests and one layman, were summoned to attend a trial in Moscow.

Normal judicial procedures did not restrict revolutionary tribunals at all; in fact, the prosecutor N.V. Krylenko stated that the courts could trample upon the rights of classes other than the proletariat.

Western observers found the setting – the grand ballroom of a former Noblemen's Club, with painted cherubs on the ceiling – singularly inappropriate for such a solemn event.

[3]New York Herald correspondent Francis McCullagh, who was present at the trial, later described its fourth day as follows: Krylenko, who began to speak at 6:10 PM, was moderate enough at first but quickly launched into an attack on religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular.

In Moscow, the ministers from the Polish, British, Czechoslovak, and Italian missions appealed 'on the grounds of humanity,' and Poland offered to exchange any prisoner to save the archbishop and the monsignor.

These appeals were for naught: Pravda editorialized on March 30 that the tribunal was defending the rights of the workers, who had been oppressed by the bourgeois system for centuries with the aid of priests.

Pro-Communist foreigners who intervened for the two men were also condemned as 'compromisers with the priestly servants of the bourgeoisie' ... Father Rutkowski recorded later that [Monsignor] Budkiewicz surrendered himself over to the will of God without reservation.

On Easter Sunday, the world was told that the Monsignor was still alive, and Pope Pius XI publicly prayed at St. Peter's that the Soviets would spare his life.

In reply to an appeal from the rabbis of New York City to spare Budkiewicz's life, Pravda wrote a blistering editorial against 'Jewish bankers who rule the world' and bluntly warned that the Soviets would kill Jewish opponents of the Revolution as well.

To make matters worse, Cardinal Gasparri had just finished reading a note from the Soviets saying that 'everything was proceeding satisfactorily' when he was handed the telegram announcing the execution.

On 31 March 1923, Holy Saturday, at 11:30 PM, after a week of fervent prayers and a firm declaration that he was ready to be sacrificed for his sins, Monsignor Constantine Budkiewicz had been taken from his cell and, sometime before the dawn of Easter Sunday, shot in the back of the head on the steps of the Lubyanka prison.