Kuntsevich had been Orthodox and then became a Greek
Catholic and a Jesuit and a bishop. He was killed by an Orthodox
crowd and therefore proclaimed a Saint and Martyr by Rome.

"In the sixteenth Century shifting political boundaries found large
numbers of Orthodox within a united Polish-Lithuanian kingdom, at
once anti-Russian and militantly Catholic. The forceful conversion
of the Orthodox, conducted primarily by the Jesuits,
was "legitimised" in 1596 by the Council of Brest-Litovsk, which
proclaimed the "union" of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches
within the Polish-Lithuanian State. (A medal coined at the creation
of the Unia showed Pope Clement VIII on his throne with a Russian
prostrated before him.)

"To facilitate this conversion, the Orthodox were allowed to retain
the Eastern (Byzantine) rite and many externals of Orthodox worship--
icons, iconostasis, Orthodox style vestments, the eight-point
cross... They continued using the Divine Liturgy of St. John
Chrysostom and simply commemorated the pope instead of the
patriarch. Many simple people thus converted without realising the
theological consequences. Those who refused to join this Uniate
Church were persecuted; thousands were martyred.

"A leader in this campaign, the Polish Jesuit Josaphat Kuntsevich,
admitted that he freely drowned the Orthodox, chopped off their
heads and profaned their churches; he ordered their dead bodies to
be thrown to dogs.

It is said that he even ordered the exhumation of
dead Orthodox Christians and had their corpses thrown to dogs.

"But one day, arriving in Vitebsk on the 12th of November, 1623,
with a band of his cohorts, Kuntsevich proceeded to knock down the
tents where the Orthodox secretly held divine services. One of
Kuntsevich's deacons attacked an Orthodox priest. The crowd, which
had run out of patience, then turned on Kuntsevich, who was
personally leading this pogrom, and with sticks and stones beat him
to death. His maimed body was placed in a sack and tossed into the
Diva river. "

The most convincing condemnation of Kuntsevich's character is found
in a letter dated March 12, 1622, one and a half years before his
death, from the Lithuanian chancellor Leo Sapiega, clearly a Roman
Catholic, the representative of the Polish king himself:

"By thoughtless violence you oppress the Russian people and urge
them on to revolt. You are aware of the censure of the simple
people, that it would be better to be in Turkish captivity than to
endure such persecutions for faith and piety. You write that you
freely drown the Orthodox, chop off their heads, and profane their
churches. You seal their churches so the people, without piety and
Christian rites, are buried like non-Christians. In place of joy,
your cunning Uniatism has brought us only woe, unrest, and conflict.
We would prefer to be without it. These are the fruits of your
Uniatism."

Let us remember that these words are not the fantasies or the
slanders of a fanatically-tempered Orthodox, but the contents of a
historical letter from the head of a Roman Catholic state, the
Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, written on behalf of the
Polish King to a turbulent Uniate bishop. In the very same letter
and with much foresight Leo Sapiega writes,

"It would have been better not to have given us nationwide strife
and hatred, and instead to have preserved us from nationwide
condemnation."

This letter is included in the appendix to the two-volume work of
the Catholic scholar, Dom Alponse Guepin: "Un apotre de l'union des
Eglises au XViie siecle Saint Josaphat et l'Eglise Greco-Slave en
Pologne et en Russe", Paris tom I: 1897, tom II, 1898.

In those evil times, there is no denying that the hands of Orthodox
and Catholics alike were stained with the blood of their fellow men.
But for the Pope to proclaim Josephat Kuntsevich a Saint is, so it
seems to Eastern Christians, an endorsement of savagery and murder
against the Orthodox.


Refer to
"An Anniversary of Mourning
Josaphat the Malevolent"
http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/josaphat_malevolent.aspx