Rome Newsroom, Sep 29, 2020 / 12:00 pm
Amid strife in their country, Catholics in Belarus attended a Mass Tuesday with a revered statue of St. Michael the Archangel, praying for an end to the persecution of the Church in Belarus and a resolution to the political crisis.
"The main heavenly patron of the Catholic Church in Belarus is St. Michael the Archangel, the victor over the evil spirit. In our churches a special prayer is recited daily through his intercession," Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz wrote in a letter announcing a month of prayer dedicated to the saint.
The statue of St. Michael, a replica of the one found in the Basilica of St. Michael in Gargano, Italy, has traveled across Belarus this month to cathedrals across four dioceses, culminating in the Mass in the capital, Minsk, on the Feast of the Archangels Sept. 29.
Bishop Yuri Kasabutsky, an auxiliary bishop in Minsk-Mohilev archdiocese, offered Mass on the feast, preceded by prayers in the Cathedral of the Blessed Name of Mary.