Feast day: November 12

St. Josaphat

Bishop, Martyr · 1580–1623

Patron of Church unity

An archbishop of the Eastern Catholic Church in what is now Ukraine and Belarus, who worked for unity between East and West and was killed by a mob opposed to it.

Josaphat Kuncevych was a monk and archbishop of the Eastern, or Byzantine, rite who gave his life for the cause of unity between the Eastern Churches and Rome — the first saint of the Eastern Catholic Churches to be formally canonized by Rome. He was born about 1580 in what is now Ukraine, then part of the Polish-Lithuanian realm.

His lifetime followed the Union of Brest, by which many of the Orthodox Ruthenians of those lands had entered into communion with the Catholic Church while keeping their own Byzantine rite and traditions. It was a bitterly contested step, dividing communities between those who accepted the union and those who fiercely rejected it. Josaphat, a Basilian monk of great holiness and eloquence, became the leading champion of the union and, in 1618, archbishop of Polotsk.

He worked tirelessly and won many over, but his very success enraged the opponents of the union, who set up a rival bishop and stirred up the people against him. Warned that his life was in danger, he refused to abandon his flock.

In 1623, a mob attacked his residence at Vitebsk, and Josaphat was struck down with an axe and shot, his body thrown into the river — a martyr, he had said he would gladly be, for the unity of the Church. The shock of his death, and the repentance of some of his killers, advanced the very cause he died for. He was canonized in 1867.

He died for the cause of Christian unity — the first saint of the Eastern Catholic churches to be formally canonized by Rome.

Image: artist unknown (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/08503b.htm