A veteran Polish Franciscan has been jailed for “hooliganism” in Russia, while another priest faces deportation for “living at the wrong address”, in a sign of possible new pressure against the Catholic Church by President Vladimir Putin's increasingly authoritarian government.
Local human rights activists said Fr Marek Bakierzynski had been detained at his parish in Belgorod, near the Ukrainian border, adding that officials from the city's FSB security service had later denied knowledge of his case.
However, in a statement issued in late January, Belgorod's district court confirmed that the Franciscan, who has ministered in Russia for two decades, faced a prison sentence for an unspecified offence after being convicted of “petty hooliganism” under the Code of Administrative Offences.
Meanwhile, Fr Michal Mzyglod, rector of the Blessed Virgin parish in Novocherkassk, told The Tablet he had been fined and ordered to leave Russia two years after obtaining a residence permit, for failing to tell the immigration service where he was living. Fr Mzyglod said he still hoped the “unfair order” could be reversed on appeal.
Both incidents occurred as the Moscow Helsinki Group, Russia's oldest human rights organisation formed in 1976 by the dissident Andrei Sakharov, was ordered to close by a court in the capital.
The order was described by the United Nations as “yet another blow to human rights and civic space”. It follows the liquidation of the For Human Rights Movement, Open Russia, and Memorial, a human rights group which studies crimes committed under the Stalinist regime.
A source from the Church in Poland told The Tablet there were “as yet no firm indications” of a new campaign against Polish Catholic clergy in Russia, but said all priests were having to “observe strict neutrality” in homilies and statements to avoid reprisals for their country's backing for Ukraine in the current war.
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