At the end of 2005, 15 years since it “came out of the catacombs” and since its public pastoral ministry was resumed, the Greek-Catholic Church in Belarus comprised 20 parishes, 13 of them registered by the civil authorities. Ten priests are involved in its pastoral service, and 15 seminarians are studying in the seminaries of various countries abroad. The numbers are still “small”, yet considered “significant and promising” by the Apostolic Visitator for the Greek-Catholics in Belarus, Archimandrite Sierghiej Gajek, who participated in a celebration to mark the 15th anniversary of the resumption of the Church’s public pastoral ministry on 26 December. An opportunity to look back on the “revival” was presented on the occasion of the patronal feast of the parish of St. Joseph the Just at Minsk (the first to be registered by the civil authorities in 1990), in the presence of the Apostolic Nuncio in Belarus, Archbishop Martin Vidovic, and Monsignor Gajek himself, who officiated a liturgy of thanksgiving. During the Communist regime from 1945 to 1990, Greek-Catholic parishes were abolished in the satellite country of the USSR. The faithful were dispersed and could only seldom be spiritually assisted by clandestine priests who came from Ukraine. A first timid signal of religious and cultural “reawakening” was the birth, in the second half of the 1980s, of a movement of Belorussian university students and intellectuals who worked in favour of a revival of the public pastoral activity of the Greek-Catholic communities. The civil registration of the first parishes occurred in the autumn of 1990. The Apostolic Nuncio Monsignor Martin Vidovic, in his homily during mass on 26 December, especially underlined the role played by the lay faithful in the organization of the first parishes, which permitted the “revival” of ecclesial life in the country. He also recalled the 65th anniversary of the death of the priest Balaslau Pachopka, unanimously considered a distinguished pastor who also contributed greatly to the development of Belorussian culture, and the author of one of the first grammars of the modern Belorussian language (published in Vilna in 1918). The celebration of fifteen years in the resumption of religious life was thus an occasion to emphasise the contribution that Belorussian Catholics, of both Byzantine and Latin rite, have made to the development of national culture, especially in the twentieth century. On the same day, Archbishop Vidovic also met with the seminarians present in the country, and encouraged them to pursue the course of studies that would lead them to the priesthood.
