St. Josaphat Kuntsevych (1580-12 November 1623) was a Polish-Lithuanian monk who served as the Eastern Catholic Archbishop of Polotsk from 1618 to 12 November 1623, succeeding Gedeon Brolnicki and preceding Antonius Sielava. He was martyred during an anti-Catholic riot in 1623.
Biography[]
Ivan Kuntsevych was born in Volodymyr, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1580, and he was baptised into an Orthodox Christian family descended from Ruthenian nobility. At school, he studied Church Slavonic and memorized most of the Horologion, and he became interested in Roman Catholicism while being apprenticed to a merchant in Vilnius. In 1604, he entered a monastery and was given the holy name "Josaphat", and he became known for his sanctity. He encouraged a revival of Eastern Catholic monastic life among the Ruthenians of Belarus and Ukraine, and he was ordained a Catholic priest in 1609.
Bishop of Vitebsk and Archbishop of Polotsk[]
Josaphat's death
On 12 November 1617, he was consecrated Bishop of Vitebsk, and he rebuilt the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Polotsk from 1618 to 1620. Although the monks feared the liturgical Latinization of the church's Greek-speaking Byzantine Rite, Josaphat was an effective eparch, having the clergy memorize his catechism, assembling synods in various town of the diocese, and won the support of a large portion of the people due to his support for the mortification of the flesh. However, several Orthodox Christians in the parish rejected unity with the Roman Catholic Church and launched an insurrection; in 1619, the insurrection's leaders were executed and the Orthodox Churches in Mogilev were transformed into Catholic churches. However, the Zaporizhian Host protected the Orthodox Christians as they elected new Orthodox bishops, and a rival Orthodox hierarchy was established. Sectarian violence over ownership of church property broke out, and, after Kuntsevych ordered the arrest of an Orthodox priest at Vitebsk in October 1623, he was lynched by an Orthodox mob.