Representatives of the Belarusian government and guests from the Vatican, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine attended Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz’s formal assumption of office as archbishop of the Minsk-Mahilyow Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which took place in a solemn ceremony at the Cathedral Church of the Most Holy Virgin Mary in Minsk on November 10.Taking part also were all Belarusian Roman Catholic bishops, the leaders of Christian denominations, and leaders of other faiths. Believers who failed to get into the packed church could watch the entire ceremony on a big plasma screen outside.
Alyaksandr Lukashenka sent a message of greetings to Msgr. Kondrusiewicz. “It is pleasant that you, our compatriot who enjoys well-deserved respect and authority among representatives of different faiths, have been appointed the spiritual leader of Belarusian Catholics,” the Belarusian leader’s press office quoted him as saying.
“Hopefully, you will do your utmost in this high position to ensure that the Roman Catholic Church continues actively contributing to strengthening stability, peace and concord in our common Belarusian home.”
In his speech, Msgr. Kondrusiewicz urged the Roman Catholic clergy and believers, as well as Belarus’ intellectuals to participate “in the spiritual revival of the homeland.”
The archbishop stressed that “the present-day world, which is rotting morally, needs salt to save itself from spiritual decay.”
“That is why be the light that shines in the spiritual darkness of our world. Be the salt that will save the world from moral decay and will add the saving taste of Christianity to it,” he said in an address to the faithful.
Msgr. Kondrusiewicz called on youths to be loyal to Christian values and use “unvarying and firm” principles.
In his address to authorities, the archbishop expressed readiness for cooperation and hope that the church and the government would both serve “the common cause of caring for the spiritual and material well-being of our compatriots.”
Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz was born in a village near Hrodna in 1946. After finishing school, he became a student of the physics and mathematics department of the Hrodna Teachers’ Training Institute, but was expelled after a year on a charge that he was a church-goer. In 1964, he was admitted to the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. Upon graduation, he worked as an engineer at a machine-building factory in Vilnius until 1976.
He was ordained priest after he completed the Theological Seminary in Kaunas in 1981. He was appointed apostolic administrator of the Minsk diocese in 1989 and served in the post until April 1991, when he was nominated apostolic administrator for the Roman Catholics of the European part of Russia.
In September 2007, the Holy Father Benedict XVI relieved him of the position of auxiliary bishop of the Mother of God Archdiocese of Moscow, which he had held since 2002, and appointed him to head the Minsk-Mahilyow Archdiocese. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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