Josaphat Kuntsevych
Josaphat Kuntsevych, OSBM (c. 1580 – 12 November 1623) was a Basilian hieromonk and archeparch of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Polotsk from 1618 to 1623. On 12 November 1623, he was beaten to death with an axe during an anti-Catholic riot by Eastern Orthodox Belarusians in Vitebsk, in the eastern peripheries of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
His death reflects the conflict between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches that intensified after four Ruthenian Orthodox Church (Kiev Metropolitanate) bishops transferred their allegiance from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople to the Holy See, under the terms laid down by the 1439 Council of Florence, by signing the 1596 Union of Brest. Archeparch Josaphat remains one of the best-known victims of anti-Catholic violence for his role in both personally accepting and very effectively spreading the Eastern Catholic Churches as a hieromonk and bishop, and was canonized in 1867 by Pope Pius IX as a saint and a martyr of the Catholic Church.
In response to the nickname "The Soul-Snatcher", which Josaphat received from both his Orthodox and Calvinist opponents, his biographer, Fr. Demetrius Wysochansky, has written:
Patron saint of [Ukraine]The St Leonards academy
In the Martyrology
- November 12 Saint Josaphat, archbishop of Polatsk–Vitebsk, martyr in Belarus