PROTESTS
AND RELIGION:
HOW PRIESTS AND BELIEVERS PARTICIPATE IN POPULAR RESISTANCE IN
BELARUS
by
Dmitry Gorevoi
Nastoiashchee
Vremia,
4 September 2020
Protests
in Belarus
are now continuing for the fourth week straight. The political
crisis has
reached the religious sphere also. A new head of the church has
appeared among
the Orthodox and the chief Catholic metropolitan has been denied
by the
authorities entry into the country. What position the Orthodox
exarchate and
the Catholic Church are occupying, how believers are reacting to
the action of
the hierarchs of their churches, whether Belarus is threatened
with autocephaly
on the "Ukrainian scenario," and how the attitude toward
Catholics is
changing were investigated by a correspondent of Nastoiashchee
Vremia.
"Orthodox
churches
and Catholic churches are not for politics"
This is
a sentence
from a speech by Alexander Lukashenko, who was officially
declared the president
of Belarus, at a rally in Grodno. He criticized sharply the
position of the
churches and declared that "the state will not view this with
indifference." That's how Lukashenko reacted to the actions of
those
Orthodox and Catholic religious leaders who are criticizing the
actions of the
authorities and are supporting the protesters.
There
are in Belarus
25 different registered confessions. The most numerous are
Orthodox, Catholics,
and protestants. Sociological surveys are conducted extremely
rarely in
Belarus, and thus it is difficult to determine more or less
precisely how many
people identify with each of the churches. According to a
sociological survey
conducted in 2012, which included a question about religious
profession, 77% of
the respondents identified themselves as Orthodox, 9.5% as
Catholics, and about
1% as protestants. According to state statistics on the number
of communities,
the situation seems somewhat different: 49% are Orthodox, 29%
are protestant of
various denominations, and 15% are Catholic. Most protestants
live in the Brest
oblast, and Catholics are in the Grodno region.
The
Catholic Church
in Belarus has a substantial number of adherents: for
comparison, in Belarus
there are 493 registered Catholic communities (including Greek
Catholics), and
in Russia there are 223, while the population of Russia is 15
times greater. In
Ukraine, where a large Greek Catholic Church exists, in absolute
numbers there
are more parishes, 4700 (of which 3800 are Greek Catholic). But
if one is speaking
of the proportion of all citizens, there are more Catholics in
Belarus than in
Ukraine (15% as opposed to 11%).
Orthodoxy
or
Catholicism in Belarus are not only religious identities but
also cultural.
People call themselves Orthodox who identify with the eastern
Slavic community.
Representatives of the national intelligentsia identify with
Catholicism more
often than with others.
Orthodox
priests:
congratulations, regrets, and appeal to OMON troops
On the
day after the
election for president of Belarus, 10 August 2020, Russian
President Vladimir
Putin congratulated Lukashenko on his victory. Immediately after
him, Patriarch
of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill published official greetings, and
following him,
the head of the Belorussian Orthodox Church (BPTs), Metropolitan
Pavel (as of
the time of publication of this article, he was already former).
Belarusians
dissatisfied with the hierarch's action sent him an open letter.
Then
Metropolitan Pavel declared that he regretted that he had
officially
congratulated Lukashenko. Many Belorussian Orthodox believers
regarded this
positively and began in the social networks to write that the
hierarch had
rescinded his congratulations. The press service of the BPTs
reacted to this:
it specified that the congratulations had not been rescinded.
But
besides the
official position of the church there are individual priests and
hierarchs.
Some supported the protesters: for example, Archbishop of Grodno
Artemy
Kishchenko, during a sermon, condemned the actions of the
authorities and urged
"to do away with the satanic neo-bolshevism;" judging by the
context
he was thinking about the Lukashenko regime. The priest spoke
out harshly about
those who had engaged in deception in the election: "You should
go to your
knees for falsification." The BPTs hastened to declare that
Father
Artemy's statement was his personal position, which did not
reflect the
official opinion of the church.
Minsk
priest Oleg
Shulgin, who previously had nurtured spiritually the Belorussian
OMON,
addressed the security forces on his Facebook page: "Guys, what
are you
doing now? Be worthy warriors of Christ and do not fulfill the
orders of
someone who wishes to remain in power, trampling on his and your
conscience,
the laws of the state, and rights of citizens!"
But not
all Orthodox
priests support the protesters. Thus, for example, the rector of
the Minsk
church of All Saints, Fr Fedor Povny, whom the news media call
"the
personal spiritual director of Lukashenko," actually repeated
the words of
the incumbent president about the impermissibility of involving
the church in
political actions, and he also urged "ceasing provocations and
mutual recrimination."
The popular church blogger Archimandrite Savva Mazhuko published
a video appeal
calling for mercy on the security troops. He said that in many
precincts the
results "actually corresponded with the published figures," and
he
generally urged preventing a revolution in Belarus.
Having
seen the
instability and ambiguity of the official church position,
Orthodox believers
initiated their own measures. For example, they conducted a
procession of the
cross along with protestants and Catholics. The BPTs originally
circulated a
statement that it had nothing to do with the demonstration, but
afterward
Metropolitan Pavel began going out to the believers and
conversing with them.
This contributed to a definite change in his public rhetoric:
the metropolitan
urged Alexander Lukashenko to halt the violence. Orthodox
priests visited
detainees several times in the infamous holding cell on
Okrestina lane, and
Metropolitan Pavel himself visited the hospital where there were
injured
protesters.
"With
the
Russian world in one's head." Replacement of Orthodox exarch
On 25
August, the
Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church replaced the leader of the
Belorussian
exarchate (vicarate). Metropolitan Pavel was called back to
Russia and an
ethnic Belarusian was appointed metropolitan of Minsk for the
first time—Bishop
of Borisovo Veniamin.
The
appointment was
greeted with criticism. Thus, the oppositionist Orthodox priest
Alexander
Shramko called the new metropolitan absolutely "pro-Lukashenko,"
and
he linked the change of exarch with statements of the incumbent
president:
"Literally a few days before this, Alexander Lukashenko accused
the church
of engaging in politics and supporting the protests. And that
the state would
take measures. You see, it took them."
Theologian
Natalia
Vasilevich characterized the new metropolitan as a conservative
and
fundamentalist, for whom the chief sin is autocephaly of the
Belorussian
church. And the religious publicist Tatiana Derkach compared him
with his
Ukrainian colleague, Metropolitan Onufry, saying both hierarchs
are people with
the "Russian world in their head."
This
idea is
confirmed in his own way by the Russian publicist of a
nationalist stripe Egor
Kholmogorov, who suggests that Metropolitan Pavel was replaced
in order to
prevent the autocephaly of Belarus on the "Ukrainian scenario,"
since
under him the "disease of
independence" has developed in Belorussian dioceses. The
Russian
nationalist Kholmogorov accused the dismissed exarch, for
example, of the
performance in Grodno of a Belorussian religious hymn "Mighty
God,"
which competed for the official anthem of Belarus in 1993 (the
publicist calls
it "neo-nazism") and also the multi-confessional procession of
the
cross "with stops at the synagogue and Catholic church."
Is
Belorussian
autocephaly possible?
Support
by the Moscow
patriarchate for the unpopular dictator increases the split
between church and
society, and in the final analysis leads to the loss of the
flock—analysts have
been writing in the religious press about possible autocephaly
for the Orthodox
Church of Belarus (that is, its independence from the Russian
Orthodox Church)
from the start of the protest demonstrations. Several Russian
news media (like
the television channel Tsargrad) report that in the event that
the opposition
comes to power in Belarus, the implementation of church
independence will start
immediately. There is the opinion that such "dangers" are
nothing
other than an attempt by political arguments to incline the BPTs
to
Lukashenko's side (its own kind of ecclesiastical adaptation of
the political
meme: "What, do you want to be like Ukraine?").
In
Ukraine, many
priests and analysts call such a scenario optimistic, and the
head of the
Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PTsU), which is independent from the
Moscow
patriarchate, declared that Belarusians already have the full
right to
autocephaly. This claim is based on the fact that in the late
17th century,
Belorussian churches were under the jurisdiction of the Kiev
metropolia, and in
1686 the ecumenical patriarch rescinded the document
transferring to Moscow the
right to the Kiev metropolia. As Archimandrite Kirill Govorun
explains, this
means that de jure now the Belorussian church is under the
jurisdiction of
Constantinople and not the Moscow patriarch.
However,
representatives of the Belorussian Orthodox Church itself—both
opposition
minded and loyal to authorities—have not spoken out about
autocephaly either in
connection with recent events in Belarus or on any other
occasion.
Catholic
protests
The
Roman Catholic
Church in Belarus occupied a definite position back before the
start of the
elections. For example, it launched the action "The Catholic
does not
falsify": its participants urged priests to talk about the
importance of
honest elections during sermons and to spread information about
the campaign
against falsifications. After the first clashes of protesters
with OMON troops,
the head of Belorussian Catholics, Metropolitan Archbishop
Tadeusz
Kondrusiewicz, urged all to discussions and said: "Let not your
hands,
created for peaceful labor and fraternal greetings, lift up
either weapons or
stones."
Vitebsk
Bishop Oleg
Butkevich spoke out more explicitly. "The regular election
evoked a crisis
in our society which led to a strained election campaign and
still to a not
entirely accurate vote count. Systems based on blood have never
been strong in
history, and justice always has returned actions done to the one
who violated
all human (not to say divine) norms," his appeal says.
Catholic
priests in
the city of Zhodino went out onto the streets along with
residents in the very
first days of rallies and condemned actions of the authorities
and supported
the protesters.
On 26
August, when
OMON troops broke up another rally in Minsk, some of the
protesters took cover
in the Red Catholic Church (the church in honor of saints Simon
and Helena on
Independence Square in Minsk, built of red bricks and hence its
name). Security
forces surrounded the building and for several hours did not
permit anyone to
leave the church. Metropolitan Kondrusiewicz expressed a protest
against the
actions of the police and called the authorities to punish the
OMON troops for
blockading the church. Several days later the authorities
prevented
Kondrusiewicz himself from entering the country. Lukashenko
accused the
Catholic hierarch of working for Poland: "He suddenly left for
consultations
in Warsaw and, having received definite assignments, he wanted
to return, but
he wound up on the no-entry list."
Metropolitan
Tadeusz
Kodrusiewicz is a citizen of Belarus, but because of the ban he
was forced to
return to Polish territory. The hierarch's lawyer pointed out
the illegality of
such actions: according to existing laws a citizen may be denied
exit from, but
not entry into the country. And even if one is talking about
exit, a court
decision is required and not an order of the border service.
The
official Vatican
has still not reacted in any way to the prevention of entry for
the hierarch.
But these actions have already been condemned in the American
State Department.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the Belorussian
authorities to let
Kondrusiewicz into the country and to guarantee freedom of
religious
confession.
From
the Orthodox
Church to the Catholic Church
Against
the backdrop
of the support of protesters on the part of Catholic priests and
the
displeasure with the official position of the Orthodox Church of
Belarus,
several believers on social networks and forums have begun
raising the question
about how to leave Orthodoxy and adopt Catholicism.
In
conversation with
a Nastoiashchee Vremya correspondent, theologian Natalia
Vasilevich explained:
Some people who identify themselves with Orthodoxy are not
pleased with the
silence of the church "Against the background of various
professional
groups, the voice of the BPTs speaks quietly, or it is not heard
at all. This
angers some Belarusians. In the first place, those for whom
Orthodoxy was a
cultural factor and who attended church only on holidays," the
expert
says. On her observations, people fulfill their need to declare
publicly their
disagreement with the vague position of the church and to
demonstrate their
dissatisfaction somehow.
"When a
worker
disagrees with the boss, he resigns demonstratively. In
approximately the same
way, one can perceive the desire of people to publicly move from
Orthodoxy into
Catholicism. Earlier such transfers were informal. A person who
was baptized by
the Orthodox simply went to confession and communion in a
Catholic church.
Moreover, many remained formally in the BPTs from purely
practical
considerations. They point out, for example, that Catholics do
not have church
divorce while Orthodox can enter into a new marriage up to three
times,"
the theologian explains.
In
addition, Natalia
Vasilevich notes a number of factors that in contemporary
Belarus enable there
not being strife between Orthodox and Catholics. The ease of
transfer from
confession to confession is explained by the large number of
mixed families
and, accordingly, a mild reception by believers of one another.
She also
recalls that the BPTs over the course of 25 years was headed by
Metropolitan
Filaret Vakhromeev, who retired in 2013. "He related in a rather
friendly
way to Catholics, and he arranged meetings and joint actions,
and he sent
Orthodox students to study in Rome," the theologian explains,
and she adds
that under the Lukashenko regime, the government facilitated
inter-confessional
peace and stability.
But if
one turns to
the earlier history of Belarus, then relatively widespread
transfers from
Orthodoxy into Catholicism were already happening. After the
third partition of
the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and the incorporation of the
territory of
modern Belarus into the Russian empire, Petersburg launched the
russification
of these territories. One of the points was the conversion of
Belorussian Greek
Catholics to Orthodoxy, as a counteraction to the Brest union.
In 1839, the
Polotsk church council was convened, which liquidated the Greek
Catholic Church
and united it with the RPTs. This provoked such a negative
reaction that many
Belarusians rejected the eastern ecclesiastical rite and
transferred into Roman
Catholicism. Of the three million Greek Catholics forcibly
converted to
Orthodoxy, by various estimates around one million joined the
Roman Catholic
Church. (tr. by PDS, posted 4 September 2020)
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