(ZENIT News / Minsk, 23.01.2025).- On December 30, 2024, Father Henrykh Akalatovich of Byelorussia was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The sentence of parish priest of the Catholic parish of Valozhyn reveals the persecution of Catholics in the country.
Father Akalotovich was arrested on November 17, 2023, in the city where he carries out his ministry, 43 miles from the capital, Minsk. He spent one year in a detention center. His closed-door trial began on November 25, 2024 in the Minsk Regional Court. Although he said he was innocent, he was sentenced for “treason against the State,” according to the independent news channel Belsat, which broadcasts from Poland. The secrecy of the hearing makes it impossible to know the charges against the priest.
Father Akalotovich was detained in the “worst detention center of Byelorussia, commonly known as ‘Amerika’, name connected with “United States spies.” On November 30, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported that Father Akalatovich will probably serve his sentence in the sadly famous penal colony of Novopolotsk, where Andrzej Poczobut is serving his sentence, an activist oof the Polish minority in Byelorussia, arrested in 2021.
According to Belsat, Father Akalotovich suffered a heart attack recently and has cancer. He underwent abdominal surgery shortly before his detention. Since his arrest, there has been no information about the state of his health.
Father Akalatovich was born in the village of Novaya Mysha, in the Baranovichi region. He began his ministry in 1984 after graduating from the Seminary of Riga. He was praised by the Byelorussian regime as he gives his homilies in the Byelorussian language. His persecution began after the rigged elections of 2020.
Other known cases of persecution of Catholic priests included the “news of the arrest of two of our brothers in Byelorussia,” Fathers Andrzej Yuchnevich and Pavel Lemekh, who were engaged in missionary work in the diocesan Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, in Sumilin, said the Superior General of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Father Luis Ignacio Rois Alonso. He said the arrest took place on May 8, 2024, as reported by the Katolik.life portal.
An additional ten priests were arrested in Byelorussia during 2023; three of them still remain detained, reported the Pontifical Foundation Aid to the Church in Need.
Catholics in Byelorussia are a tenth of the nine and a half million inhabitants. Up to November 11, 2024, there were 1,287 political prisoners, among them Ales Bialiatski, founder of the Viasna Byelorussian Human Rights group and Nobel Prize laureate in 2022.
The new law on freedom of conscience and religious organizations, signed in December 2023 by President Lukashenko, limits the educational and missionary activities of the Churches. It also makes compulsory a new registration for all parishes at the risk of being closed. The Vatican’s Croatian Nuncio, Archbishop Ante Jozic, left the country last September 15.
