English
«Belarus Knockin’ at the Vatican’s Doors»
Over the past two years, Belarusian civil society, as well as political prisoners and their families, have repeatedly appealed to the Holy See and Pope Francis in the hope that the Vatican will be able to help stop the repression in Belarus and release political prisoners. The Christian Vision group follows these efforts and often […]
Forum 18. BELARUS: Mass banned at Minsk’s iconic Red Church
Visiting the closed Catholic Church of Saints Simon and Helena (Red Church) in central Minsk on 12 October, the day the parish was ordered to remove its property, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, retired Archbishop of Minsk-Mogilev, «was crying from the hopelessness of the situation». The worship ban and enforced closure followed a «strange and ambiguous» early-morning fire […]
The Christian Vision Group’s Statement Regarding the Arbitrary Withdrawal from St Simon and St Helena’s Roman Catholic Parish Right to Use its Church
12 October 2022 On 6 October 2022, it became known that the Minsk Spadchyna Municipal Unitary Enterprise, the owner for the purpose of operational management of the buildings of the church (known as the Red Church) and rectory on the Niezaliežnasci square in Minsk, sent a notification letter to the leadership of the parish community […]
Ales Bialiatski, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate: His Catholic Activism in the 1990s
The Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize laureate is known primarily for his human rights work. Ales Bialiatski has been fighting for human rights for 26 years. It is little known, however, that in the 1990s he was well known for his work in reviving the life of the Catholic Church in Belarus after the decades of […]
Churches and anti-war movement in Belarus
Last week pastors, Viačaslau Hančarenka and Antoni Bokun, from two different Minsk-based Protestant congregations were detained and, subsequently, fined. The charges, most likely, relate to performing a Sunday service on the premises of the ‘New Life’, church, forcibly evicted from its building in Minsk last February. Since the rigged 2020 presidential election and the massive […]
Forum 18. BELARUS: Fines, car park worship ban for New Life Church
3 October 2022 Olga Glace, Forum 18 On 25 September, Police banned Minsk’s New Life Church from meeting for Sunday worship in the car park of the building from which officials forcibly evicted it in February 2021. Police detained the Church’s pastor Vyacheslav Goncharenko and another pastor Antoni Bokun. A judge fined each two months’ […]
Fundraising for the Persecuted and Those at Risk of Persecution
The Christian Vision announces a Solidarity Fund for supporting the Christians who have been persecuted or are at risk of persecution during the Belarusian political crisis and the war in Ukraine. The interdenominational Supervisory Board for the distribution of funds consists of: Very Rev. VLADIMIR DROBYSHEVSKY, an Orthodox priest; spent 25 days under arrest […]
Forum 18. BELARUS: Officials threaten to liquidate Minsk’s New Life Church
7 September 2022Olga Glace, Forum 18 Minsk City Administration and local police have warned New Life Pentecostal Church that meetings for worship in the church car park are illegal and threatened to liquidate the Church in court. Liquidation would make any exercise of freedom of religion or belief illegal and punishable with up to a […]
Statement of the Christian Vision Group of the Co-ordination Council of Belarus Regarding Persecution of Priest Uladzislau Bahamolnikau
1 September 2022 On 31 August 2022, Fr Uladzislau Bahamolnikau, a priest of the Epiphany parish of the Belarusian Orthodox Church in Minsk, a member of the Minsk Eparchial Court, and a philosophy lecturer at the Minsk Theological Academy, was brutally detained. During the detention, officers of GUBOPiK — the Main Directorate for Combating Organised […]
