Saint Josaphat Kuntsevych

John Kuntsevych was born in 1580 in Volhynia, to parents from the Ukrainian nobility who were committed Orthodox. He was sent to Vilnius very young to learn trade, and he arrived in the middle of a bitter conflict. The Union of Brest in 1596 had led part of the Ruthenian Christians to recognize the pope as head of the Church while keeping the Greek rite: they are the Greek Catholics, or Uniates. The other part remained Orthodox. Between the two sides, in those lands, it came to hatred. John chose the Uniates, and in 1604 he became a monk with the name Josaphat. He became archbishop of Polotsk and spent his life trying to heal that rift — with a method that was at times persuasion and at times not: he took back churches, removed priests, and made himself hated by part of the population. On November 12, 1623, in Vitebsk, a mob attacked his residence. He was struck with an ax, killed and thrown into the Dvina River. In 1867 he became the first Eastern saint canonized according to the procedure of the Latin Church. His is a story that must be told in full, because it’s the story of a man killed in a division among Christians — and in 1963, during the Council, Catholic and Orthodox observers stopped to pray together over his tomb in Saint Peter’s. If your name is Josaphat, today is your name day.