On November 12 the Church honors St. Josaphat (c. 1580-1623), the Basilian monk and Archbishop of Polotsk who was martyred by an Orthodox mob at Vitebsk on November 12, 1623, for his work to bring the Ruthenian (Ukrainian-Belarusian) Church into union with Rome. He was the first Eastern-rite saint canonized in the modern era — raised to the altars by Pius IX in 1867.
Born Josaphat Kuncevyc around 1580 at Volodymyr-Volynskyi in what is now Ukraine, he entered the Basilian Order and was consecrated Archbishop of Polotsk in 1617. His efforts to implement the Union of Brest (1595) — by which the Ruthenian Church had entered communion with Rome while keeping its Eastern liturgy — met violent opposition from those who wished to remain under the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople. At Vitebsk, a mob burst into his house, beat him, shot him, and threw his body into the river. His relics were recovered and eventually translated to Rome, where they are enshrined in St. Peter's Basilica.
Josaphat's feast is a feast of Church unity. His death, and the long centuries of division between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, give his memorial a particular weight in the ecumenical context. Polotsk in modern Belarus and Vitebsk — the martyrdom site — do not yet have guides in this directory. His relics at Rome, in St. Peter's under the altar of St. Basil, are the principal accessible pilgrimage site.
