12.10.2006
BELARUS: MIXED STATE RESPONSE TO CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT PROTESTS


By Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service

Catholics in the north-western city of Grodno [Hrodna] have halted their
hunger-strike, after receiving endorsement from the city administration
for church construction on 6 December, parish priest Fr Aleksandr Shemet
has told Forum 18 News Service. He stressed, however, that this does not
mean that Our Lady of Ostrobrama Church has received permission to build.
"It will be some time before anything actually happens," Fr Aleksandr
explained to Forum 18 from Grodno on 11 December. "The document we have
received is approval for us to gather the relevant documents and then ask
for final permission from the President - it just means that the Governor
and the city authorities endorse our application."

Grodno Regional Executive Committee chairman Vladimir Savchenko, in a 6
December letter seen by Forum 18, tells local Catholic bishop Aleksandr
Kaszkiewicz that he supports the city authorities' proposal and "does not
object to the construction of a Catholic church at 2 Repin Street."
Savchenko adds that the city authorities have ordered a local firm dealing
with construction projects "to compile, in accordance with Belarusian law,
documentation allocating a plot of land for the construction of a house of
worship."

According to Fr Aleksandr Shemet, 18 parishioners began their
hunger-strike on 1 December at Our Lady of Ostrobrama Church's temporary
wooden chapel at the Repin Street site (see F18News 29 November 2006
). On 6 December,
Pastor Vyacheslav Goncharenko of Minsk's charismatic New Life Church
visited the Grodno Catholics with various Protestant pastors and
participants in his congregation's own October hunger-strike (see F18News
3 November 2006 ).
Photographs on New Life's website show a supply of bottled water brought
by the visitors, as well as a sign - "New Life Church, Minsk - we are
praying for you" - which the Catholics put on display in their chapel (see
).


New Life's example appears to have inspired the Grodno parish. "We are
grateful to the Protestants for giving us courage," Fr Aleksandr remarked
on the charismatic church's website. "We prayed for the hunger-strikers
every day during their protest." On 24 November more than 100 Our Lady of
Ostrobrama parishioners delivered an ultimatum to the offices of their
local Regional Executive Committee, declaring their intention to go on
hunger strike if they did not receive official state permission to build a
church by 1 December (see F18News 29 November 2006
).

Photographs of the gathering, including one of anonymous men in plain
clothes filming the Catholics, have been published by the Charter 97
Belarusian news website published (see
). Monitoring of
religious communities by the state authorities is routine (see eg. F18News
3 October 2006 ).

Our Lady of Ostrobrama Church has been trying for the past ten years to
obtain official permission to build on Repin Street land purchased by
Grodno Catholic diocese, according to a lengthy 6 November 2006 article on
Belarusian news website Euramost. The Grodno parishioners' six files of
correspondence with the state authorities document their attempts to
secure the necessary approval for a new church building from state
departments dealing with land allocation, architecture, religious affairs,
safety and hygiene, ecology and land resources, heritage, electricity, gas,
heating, lighting, telecommunications, communal services and traffic
police. In October 2001, after gathering thousands of supporters'
signatures, the Catholics finally received the regional authorities'
permission to compile a construction project. Their request for official
allocation of land for church construction has continued to meet with
refusals, however. Moreover, the article continues, the construction of
new houses of worship in regional centres such as Grodno requires the
agreement of President Aleksandr Lukashenko as of May 2005.

Fr Aleksandr Shemet, in a further comment on New Life's website, states
that Our Lady of Ostrobrama parishioners continue to pray not only for the
plight of all Belarusian churches without a building, but also for those
Polish Catholic priests and nuns who have been refused permission to work
in Belarus after the end of 2006 (see F18News 3 October 2006
). "We want not only
the Catholic Church, but all Christians to be able to practise their
religion freely," he remarks. "So we will pray that believers are not
afraid to demand their rights."

Bishop Aleksander Kaszkiewicz, in a 5 December open letter in Polish to
members of his diocese, also requests prayer for the 12 Polish priests and
nuns. He insists that, when he presented the state authorities in June with
a list of foreign priests and nuns who would continue to work in Grodno
diocese next year, "I expressed my pastoral trust in all of them. I do not
see any reason why I should withdraw that trust."Bishop Aleksander also
expresses his "regret and protest" at the state's decision to bar the 12 -
reiterated in a 29 November letter in Russian from top religious affairs
official Leonid Gulyako circulated with the open letter.

The Bishop, who is Chairman of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in
Belarus, points out that the authorities have refused to overturn their
decision despite the submission of 12,000 signatures in protest at the
decision. Bishop Kaszkiewicz has also made repeated personal appeals, as
has the Apostolic Administrator of Minsk-Mohilev [Minsk-Mahilyow]
Archdiocese Bishop Antoni Dziemianko and Bishop Wladyslaw Blin of Vitebsk
[Vitsyebsk] Diocese.

Since "the law of the universal Church entrusts a bishop with government
of the Church," writes Bishop Aleksander, and Belarusian law allows a
bishop freedom to invite citizens of foreign countries, "interference in
the authority invested in a diocesan bishop violates both the law and the
freedom of the Church."

The state Plenipotentiary for Religious and Ethnic Affairs Leonid Gulyako,
in his 29 November letter, tells Bishop Aleksander that he "was informed in
person" on 10 and 23 November about the state's decision not to extend the
relevant religious work permits. Maintaining that the invitation of
foreign citizens for religious activity in Grodno Catholic diocese "lies
within your area of competency," he adds that "in this regard we are
prepared to consider for approval communication from you regarding the
invitation of foreign citizens to parishes" - except for 12 Polish priests
and nuns refused permission to continue working in Belarus after the end of
2006 (see F18News 3 October 2006
).

While territorially smaller than each of the other three Catholic dioceses
in Belarus, Grodno diocese has approximately twice as many parishes,
putting it on a par with the Belarusian Orthodox Church in that region.
According to 2005 state figures, there were 170 Catholic parishes in
Grodno region supported by 168 clergy, of whom 72 were foreign citizens.

Of the 350 or so Catholic priests in Belarus, more than half are foreign
citizens. Two did not have their annual visas renewed at the end of 2005,
and were thus forced to return to their native Poland (see F18News 22
December 2005 , 6
January 2006 and 13
January 2006 ).

Foreign religious workers invited by local religious communities are
increasingly being barred from Belarus. The State Committee for Religious
Affairs - which has to approve all such invitations and agree that such
visits are "necessary" - denied the charismatic Full Gospel Union
permission to invite Nigerian pastor Anselm Madubuko to preach in three of
its churches in August. US citizen Stewart Vinograd - pastor of a
Minsk-based Messianic Jewish congregation he founded ten years ago - did
not have his annual religious work permit renewed in late spring 2006. The
Hare Krishna community is among those unable to invite foreign citizens as
they do not have the required ten registered religious communities (see
F18News 18 October 2006
).

Belarus has officially rejected the United Nations Human Rights
Committee's finding that it has violated its citizens' religious freedom
by refusing to register a national Hare Krishna association (see F18News 3
August 2006 ). However,
in a recent change of fortune for Belarusian Lutherans, the Independent
Evangelical-Lutheran Church in the Republic of Belarus was finally
registered as a republic-wide association on 14 December 2006, its chair
Pastor Sergei Heil told Forum 18 on 17 December (see F18News 31 October
2006 ).

Meanwhile, the Minsk-based charismatic New Life Church has announced that
it will devote 20-22 December to fasting and prayer for an important
forthcoming session of the Higher Economic Court. At a hearing scheduled
for 11am local time on 22 December, the Court is expected to rule on
whether the city authorities' moves to terminate the church's land rights
and force the sale of its building are lawful (see, for example, F18News 6
October 2006 ).

As the Minsk authorities began to push through the sale in early October,
New Life embarked on its high-profile hunger-strike, which culminated in a
presidential administration official advising the church to appeal to the
courts once again (see F18News 20 October 2006
). On 26 October a
senior judge cancelled a 27 October 2005 decision against New Life and
called for the church's case to be heard again (see F18News 3 November
2006 ). On 4 November
the presidium of the Higher Economic Court cancelled every court decision
issued against New Life since 27 October 2005. On 7 December the
preliminary hearing of the new case took place, at which both sides set
forth their positions.

Forum 18 News Service notes that - after exhausting other methods of
negotiation with the state authorities - some religious believers are now
adopting tactics more usually associated with secular political activism
in their pursuit of religious freedom in Belarus, which has the tightest
controls on religious activity anywhere in Europe (see F18News 29 November
2006 ).