After a long trip from the United States, I was met at the airport in Minsk, Belarus by a kind and welcoming gentleman by the name of Vladislav Volokhovich of Open Hearts Foundation. After spending the night in Minsk, we traveled to Braslaw, a small town between Minsk and Vitebsk. Along the way we took in the beautiful countryside filled with towering, and thick pine forests. Small villages we encountered each had their own neo-gothic Catholic church and Byzantine Orthodox church.
As we drove, Vladislav shared a great deal with me about Belarus and his life. It dawned on me when he said that he was my age that we had grown up in entirely different contexts. I remembered how we viewed Russia and the USSR in the 1980s. The exchanges with Russian students I had when my family lived in San Diego, California, came vividly to mind, especially when we learned how to make Fabergé eggs. I had made a beautiful imitation egg after I visited the museum and saw the “real thing” there.
Here I was in Belarus with someone who had grown up in Communism and lived through the change thereafter, someone who is now a Scripture Professor at one of the two national seminaries, someone who has five children and is deeply committed to what I am also committed: pro-life, pro-family, the priesthood, and the Faith.
This was going to be a good mission, I thought. At one point during the trip, we stopped to pick up an icon for Valdislav. There, I could not help but purchase some icons and incense for friends and family. The cost was indeed quite reasonable.
When we finally arrived in Braslaw, I celebrated Mass and was very happy to meet the young and cheerful Bishop of Vitebsk, His Excellency Aleh Butkevich. I discovered he is only five years older than I, and two of his sisters are religious sisters at the Convent where I was staying. It also happened to be the town where the bishop was raised, where 85% of the residents are Catholic.
Generally speaking, western Belarus has more Catholics than Orthodox because of how it borders with Poland and Lithuania, and in the east there are logically more Orthodox because of the border with Russia. It is good to learn the less obvious facts and cultural nuances in nations we visit. In terms of the pro-life situation, the country unfortunately has a mentality quite open to abortion since it was imposed in 1920 by the Bolsheviks. Unlike in the West, the issue of contraception was not used as a means to bring about abortion, even though abortion itself is certainly part of the contraceptive “genus.” Since abortion is now part of three generations in each Belarussian family, to change the mentality is not an easy task.
Notwithstanding, attempts are made, and there are some fruits already showing. The government is giving young families initiatives to have children by offering everything from three-year maternity leaves to more inexpensive housing. If a couple has three children they get upgraded to a larger apartment; if they have five children, they can even get a house with a yard.
After spending a pleasant weekend speaking with the Bishop through the excellent translation of Vladislav, we began the pro-life priest “retreat” on Monday with two 45-minute conferences per day, in addition to an instructive homily at each daily Mass. I was pleased that between 30 and 40 priests were able to be present. The numbers were not always consistent due to the different obligations each priest had, and the distances they had to travel within the diocese are certainly prohibitive.
Providentially, I was able to express the urgency of the pro-life message as I laid out in four conferences the magisterial history on the topic from Pope Leo XIII’s Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae in 1880 to Pope John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae in 1995 (with Pope Pius XI’s Casti Connubii in 1930 and Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae in 1968). I was aiming to discuss NFP, but when I got to it, Vladislav took over since he is an expert in the field. It was very good to work with someone who is on the same wavelength. In the course of the conferences, I tried to demonstrate the link between contraception, abortion, divorce, IVF, so-called homosexual “marriage,” and transhumanism. The last three themes are not yet major issues in Belarus, but showing the link between them and the others, I was hoping to alert them to the possibilities. All it would take is a different sort of government, and in a country with a bureaucratic mentality as strong as the one found in Belarus, such programs could easily be implemented.
It is for this reason that we need to focus on changing the hearts of people. Priests are naturally good instruments to help us reach such an objective, and such retreats help bring back awareness of a crucial issue for the common good of the Church and the societies in which she finds herself.
It was also for this reason, i.e. that of the priest’s role in the Culture of Life, that the Bishop asked me to focus on the liturgy and priestly spirituality in my last conference on the third day. I started with the theology of St. John Chrysostom to develop an argument for the sanctity of the priesthood tied to the liturgical care and observance required by such a mission. It struck me as obvious that care for the liturgy and prayer of the priest is key to his sanctity and his mission in reordering society according to the dictates of the Word of God.
Yet this is also true: Care for prayer and the liturgy is intimately tied to forming holier families that are open to life. The last day was the feast of St. Bartholomew, and the Gospel stressed the conversion of Nathaniel to become St. Bartholomew. He was a good man who was attentive to the Scripture but was willing to set aside his preconceptions to listen to the Word of God rather than the words of the world. Let us pray that this may be the case for all of the priests of the Diocese of Vitebsk, and let us pray that many fruits may come from Bishop Butkevich’s efforts to rekindle the Gospel of Life that Pope St. John Paul II so tirelessly sought throughout his pontificate.
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