On this day in 1874 the Pratulin Massacre occurred in which the Imperial Russian Army shot down thirteen Greek Catholic (Ruthenian) congregants who had gathered to protest the forced assignment of a Russian Orthodox Priest to their parish.
The city today is in Poland, on the border with Belarus.
Ruthenians are members of an Eastern Rite Church which was first separated from the West at the time of the Great Schism, but which came back into communion with Rome in 1646. Contrary to what might be supposed, particularly today, after time and distance passed from the 1054 schism and its renewed 1492 schism various Eastern Rite bodies that were in the Orthodox communion did start to come back in, with it indeed being the case that several Russian Orthodox Bishops came back in. In Imperial Russia, however, this was violently opposed, including in the case of at least one of the bishops. In the instance of Pratulin, this was one of several such instances as Russian Orthodox clerics were assigned to Ruthenian parishes against their will.
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