On this day in 1623 Josaphat Kuntsevych, Bishop of the Ruthenian Catholic Church (Ukrainian Catholic Church, was martyred in Vitebsk, Belarus, which was the part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.
He had been ordained in as an Eastern Catholic priest in 1609. Living in a region in which the Orthodox Church had been strong, he faced opposition in his clerical duties but movement towards union with Rome was building in the area and as there was building assent to the Union of Brest. In 1620 this began to be opposed when Cossacks intervened in the region. In 1623, Josaphat, by then a Bishop, ordered the arrest of the sole remaining priest who was offering Orthodox services in Vitebsk which resulted in his murder by some Orthodox townspeople. Some have suggested that, however, Lithuanian Protestants were secretly the instigators of the action.
His body is in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, and he is recognized as a martyr by the Church.
This points out a lot of interesting aspects of history that in the United States, and indeed many places, are poorly understood. For one thing, there have been repeated efforts to reunite the East and West in Apostolic Christianity, and on several occasions they've been highly successful. The seeming final breach between the East and West did not really come until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and indeed at that time the East and West were largely reunited. Following the return of the schism, over the next 500+ years various churches in the East have returned to communion with Rome. The Schism should have completely ended following the Council of Florence, in which the Eastern Bishops agreed to reunion, but resistance at the parishioner level precluded it, just as can be seen to be a factor here. Resistance higher up, sometimes violent, has also had an impact, however, as at least in one occasion Russian Orthodox Bishops affecting a reunion were murdered. At the present time, it seems clear that the Metropolitan of Constantinople, the senior Bishop of the Eastern Orthodox, would end the schism as to his church but for fear of parishioner and cleric level resistance.
Rodrigo de Arriaga professed vows to become a Jesuit Priest. He was one of the leading Spanish Jesuits of his day.
