EUROPE/RUSSIA – The Catholic community in Moscow commemorates Father Konstantin Budkiewicz 100 years after his execution

EUROPE/RUSSIA – The Catholic neighborhood in Moscow commemorates Father Konstantin Budkiewicz 100 years after his execution

Saturday, 1 April 2023

Moscow (Agenzia Fides) – “The cross will not be a supply of bitterness and disappointment, however is already the start of glory”. That is how Paolo Pezzi, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Mom of God in Moscow, spoke yesterday, Friday, March 31, in the course of the homily of the Eucharistic celebration he presided over on the event of the centenary of the execution of priest Konstantin Budkiewicz. In the course of the Mass, celebrated within the Catholic cathedral of Moscow, prayers had been additionally held for the reason for beatification in progress, arrange for the Polish priest and different women and men who, within the twenties and thirties, testified to the religion in Christ within the USSR.
It was exactly in March of 100 years in the past that the method in opposition to the Catholic Church by the Leninist authorities started in Moscow. At the start of 1922, in the course of the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, the federal government authorities requested the representatives of the Catholic Church for an inventory of the objects that might be topic to confiscation. In response, Jan Feliks Cieplak, Archbishop of Mogilev, despatched a round to his clergymen forbidding them to ship the requested inventories, since solely the Holy See might get rid of ecclesiastical property in use by Catholics. Regardless of the elemental function of mediation performed in the course of the negotiations by Father Edmund Walsh SJ − director of the pontifical aid mission in Russia in the course of the famine of the Nineteen Twenties after which the best diplomatic consultant of the Holy See within the Soviet Union − the battle between the Catholic neighborhood, with a Polish majority, and the Leninist authorities proved insurmountable.
On November 25, 1922, the Presidium of the Govt Committee of the Petrograd Governorate ordered the closure of Catholic church buildings till an settlement was reached in response to the wording proposed by the Folks’s Commissariat for Justice, and on December 5 and 6, seals had been positioned within the locations of worship. On March 2, 1923, Bishop Cieplak and 14 Catholic clergymen, together with Exarch Leonid Fëdorov and Budkiewicz, acquired a summons for March 5 on the Moscow Central Revolutionary Courtroom, a prelude to the trial that occurred from March 21 to 26 of that month, to which the defendants’ legal professionals weren’t admitted. As a substitute, Bolshevik onlookers had been current, purposely invited to attend the interrogations. The trial ended with Cieplak and Budkiewicz being sentenced to demise, Fëdorov to 10 years in solitary confinement, and a number of other years in jail (from 5 to 10 years) for the opposite clergymen. Because of worldwide strain, the archbishop’s demise sentence was commuted to 10 years in jail (later resolved with exile) and, of the opposite two demise sentences, solely Budkiewicz was executed, on March 31, exactly, Holy Saturday that 12 months for the Catholic neighborhood. An “ascent to Heaven for the fruits of life”, as Archbishop Pezzi outlined it, whereas ready for the reason for beatification to take its course. In accordance with the reorganization established in 2021 by the diocesan courtroom of the Archdiocese of the Mom of God, the trigger – which remains to be in its preliminary part – is at the moment instituted for the servants of God Antonij Maleckij (1861-1935) – Titular Bishop of Dionysiana and Apostolic Administrator of Leningrad – and companions: Bishop Karol Śliwowski (1855-1933), Monsignor Konstantin Budkiewicz (1867-1923), Fr. Jan Trojgo (1881-1932), Fr. Antonij Červinskij (1881-1938), Mr. Antoni Dziemieszkiewicz (1881-1938), Mr. Francisk Budris (1882-1937), Mr. Pavel Homič (1893-1941); sister Ekaterina Sienskaja OPL ( by beginning Anna Abrikosova) (1883-1936); the laywoman Kamilla Krušel’nickaja (1892-1937).
This case will not be the one one pending for Catholics who testified to their religion in Christ in the course of the Soviet regime and within the interval instantly following the top of the USSR. In 2019, the reason for beatification of Eduard Profittlich SJ (1890-1942), Catholic Archbishop of Tallinn, sentenced to demise, however died earlier than execution as a result of inhuman circumstances to which he was subjected throughout his imprisonment, entered the Roman part; and in 2020 Msgr. Bernardo Antonini (1932-2002), promoter of the rebirth of the Catholic Church in Russia and founding father of the Catholic seminary of St. Petersburg, was declared Venerable.
In accordance with the latest press launch on the conclusion of the 57th Plenary Meeting of the Convention of Catholic Bishops of Russia, held close to Novosibirsk from 28 February to 2 March, the Catholic neighborhood in Moscow will as soon as once more commemorate the 1923 trial from 7 to 9 November. The beginning date of the celebrations coincides with the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, which occurred on November 7, in response to the Gregorian calendar. (CD) (Agenzia Fides, 1/4/2023)

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