Pope at Audience remembers Polish martyrs

By Wojciech Rogacin

“Thirty years ago, Saint John Paul II beatified Vincent Lewoniuk and his 12 companions—martyrs. They defended their belonging to the Catholic Church and their unity with the Successor of Saint Peter, even to the point of shedding their blood, while remaining faithful to their own Eastern tradition,” Pope Leo XIV said in his greeting to Polish pilgrims during the General Audience on Wednesday.

“I entrust to their intercession the cause of unity among Christ’s disciples and the cause of Catholics persecuted today for their faith,” the Pope added.

A symbol of Church unity

The Byzantine-rite Catholic Church emerged in the territories of the Polish Republic following the Union concluded in 1596 at Brest-Litovsk (from which the name “Uniates,” often used to describe the faithful of these Churches, is derived). At that time, a portion of the Orthodox Church re-united with the Catholic Church. The faithful retained the Eastern rite but acknowledged the authority of the Pope and the Catholic faith.

In the 19th century, Greek Catholics in eastern Poland—then under Russian rule—were forced by Tsarist authorities to convert to Orthodoxy. Some were killed for refusing to convert to Orthodoxy, while others were deported to Siberia or persecuted in other ways.

Wincenty Lewoniuk and his 12 companions were killed by Tsarist soldiers on January 24, 1874, in Pratulin, Poland. They had gathered in front of their Greek Catholic church to prevent it from being taken over by Tsarist officials and converted into an Orthodox church. The commander of the Tsarist troops ordered his men to fire upon the defenceless people kneeling in the snow.

The Martyrs of Pratulin have become a symbol of the preservation of the Catholic faith and of Church unity under the leadership of the successor of Saint Peter.

John Paul II on the path toward the full unity of the family of Christ’s disciples

The words of Leo XIV harmonize with the message conveyed by Saint John Paul II during the beatification Mass celebrated at the Vatican thirty years ago, on October 6, 1996.

“Wincenty Lewoniuk and his 12 companions… invite us all, through their example and intercession, to courageously continue the journey toward the full unity of the entire family of Christ’s disciples, in the spirit of the ecumenical directives of the Second Vatican Council,” Saint John Paul II said at the time.

The remains of Saint Josaphat Kuntsevych, another great champion of the Union, rest in the Vatican Basilica. He was sixteen years old when the Union of Brest was proclaimed. After serving for forty-three years as the Byzantine-rite Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Polotsk, he suffered martyrdom in Vitebsk at the hands of Orthodox opponents because he had sought the unity of the Church. His body remained for 210 years in Biała Podlaska, not far from Pratulin. Since 1949, it has rested in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, near the tomb of another sainted Pope, John XXIII.