St Josaphat

12^th November 1623 was the day on which Josaphat Kunsevich, the Archbishop of Polotsk (now in northern Belarus) was murdered by a mob because he sought to reconcile two divergent parts of the Christian Church. He was canonized, as Saint Josaphat (or Joseph) of Polotsk, in 1867, being the first saint from the eastern (Orthodox) church to be recognised as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

He was born in the 1580s at Vladimir, which is now on the border of Poland and Ukraine. Although his father was Catholic, Josaphat became a monk in the Orthodox monastery at Vilna and eventually rose to be the abbot. As such, he practiced the Byzantine rather than the Roman rite in his worship.

In 1617 he was elected as Bishop of Vitebsk and then became Archbishop of Polotsk. His diocese was riven between two opposing groups, namely those who sought to preserve the division between east and west and those who wanted to bring the two sides together in the eventual hope of uniting the Church. By siding with the latter faction, Josaphat made many enemies for himself. These even included Catholics who objected to his use of the Byzantine rite.

Although he never advocated violence in pursuit of his aims, plenty was used by both sides during years of rioting. Eventually, the separatists descended on Josaphat’s house, having hatched a plot that would give them an excuse to remove him once and for all. A mob burst into the courtyard of his house and, when Josaphat appeared, knowing full well what the outcome would be, he was attacked with axes and then shot, his body being thrown into the river.

This sad business, in which Christians were content to murder fellow Christians, was put into perspective by the fact that lives were saved by local Jews who rushed in to restore order and prevent more of Josaphat’s followers from being killed.

© John Welford