Expert: Minsk Puts Pressure on Catholic Church in Belarus And Makes Advances To Vatican

By analizing the recent conflict between Belarusian authorities and Catholic Church, that started after the insinuations of Commissioner for Religion and Nationalities Leanid Hulyaka, we can say that Belarusian government’s policies towards Catholic Church is quite contraversive in the “state administartion VS diplomatic relations”. That claims Natallya Vasilevich, the expert of “For Freedom of Religion and Belief” site.

According to her, in the “state administration” the unsatisfaction is expressed towards Catholic Church and it is being criticized for its human resources policies (Belarusian dioceses have to look for foreign priests due to the lack of the local ones).

“Many priests, even being in a good command of one of the state languages, responsibly serving their ministry, and commiting no such offences like “driving while intoxicated” are not given permits to have a ministry in Belarus without any substantial reason”.

At the same time, in relations with Vatican Belarusian government uses another rhethorics, the rhethorics of “high esteem”, “constructivity and the “balance”. “They can pressurize the local Church, but the dialogue with Vatican is wilfully friendly, because Vatican is out jurisdiction of Belarusian regime and the dialog with it has the foreign-policy goals”, – supposes Vasilevich.

According to her, such modus operandi of Belarusian government will not be able to last long with the new Pope, new Secretary of State of Vatican and relatively new Apostolic Nuncio.

As KRYNICA.INFO had reported before, Leanid Hulyaka stated on January, 22nd that several priests from Poland are engaged in Belarusian politics and that Catholic Church is not interested in educating Belarusian priests.

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko stated during the press-conference on January, 29th that he is not satisfied with work of several Polish priests.

Belarusian Catholics, being outraged with Leanid Hulyaka’s insinuations, began signature collection under the open letter to the government, stating that baseless critics made by a high-ranking government official insults the believers, their pastors and their religious feelings.

On January, 30th, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus Uladzimir Makey met with Apostolic Nuncio in Belarus Claudio Gugerotti. According to MFA, the meeting was arranged by the Belarusian party.

03.02.2015 Belarus| Tags: , ,


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