Moscow and Minsk Attack Catholicism to Defend Lukashenka and Russian World

Executive Summary:

• In advance of his sham re-election, Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka has launched an expanded campaign against Roman Catholics, the 14 percent of his nation who have been the most opposed to the Minsk strongman in the past.
• Moscow has joined this effort to help Lukashenka, defend Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “Russian world,” and fight efforts inside Belarus to seek autocephaly for Belarus’s Orthodox church.
• These efforts may ebb after Lukashenka is safely “re-elected,” but hostility to Roman Catholicism in both countries is likely to continue. It could expand, given that Russian commentators are calling for treating Catholics as harshly as Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has long viewed Roman Catholics, who form 9-14 percent of the Belarusian population, with hostility and suspicion, given their opposition to his candidacy in 2020 (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 5, 2020; see EDM, December 22, 2020). This perception persists despite relatively good official ties with the Vatican, one of the few foreign states willing to receive him (Fondsk.ru, January 9). Now, Lukashenka has launched a broad attack on Catholics and Catholicism in advance of his sham re-election scheduled for January 26, 2025. That crackdown has been widespread and harsh, with the number of Catholic parishes in Belarus declining and ever more priests sentenced to as much as 11 years in prison for “treason” (Belstat, December 31, 2024; The Tablet, January 22). 

Moscow has joined this effort not only to help Lukashenka but also to defend Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “Russian world” (Russkiy Mir; Русский мир) and challenge efforts inside Belarus to seek autocephaly (self-governance) for the Belarusian Orthodox Church as well. That last concern has also led officials in both capitals to attack the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople and Uniatism (sometimes referred to as Eastern Catholicism) in Belarus, Ukraine, and elsewhere (Fondsk.ru, January 9; Rubaltic.ru, January 19). At least some of these efforts will probably ebb after Lukashenka is safely “re-elected,” but Russian and Belarusian hostility toward Roman Catholicism makes it unlikely that these efforts will disappear altogether. For example, one Russian commentator has gone so far as to say that Roman Catholics are just as “extremist” as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which have been the subject of the longest and harshest anti-religious campaign in recent Russian history (Materik.ru, June 25, 2020). Even authoritarian states have found that it is much easier to stoke such hostility than it is to snuff it out. Due to this, Russian-Belarusian official anti-Catholicism will further exacerbate problems between Moscow and Minsk, on the one hand, and Western capitals, on the other. 

Relations between the two Slavic states and Roman Catholicism have long been fraught and have only been exacerbated by recent events. The story of  medieval Russian Prince Aleksandr Nevsky’s relationship to Catholicism is present in modern Russian and Belarusian perceptions of the religion. Nevsky made an alliance with the Mongols because he was fighting against not only the Teutonic knights but also Roman Catholic missionaries whom they believe wanted to convert Russians from Orthodoxy and place them under the control of the Pope (Epiphany Cathedral in Elokhov, September 11, 2019). Putin ideologists, since the start of Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine, have frequently repeated that argument (Ritm Eurasia, April 22, 2024). 

That historical memory may be less important at present than the relations between Catholics in Belarus and their co-religionists in Ukraine and how these relations are viewed in Minsk and Moscow. The Belarusian Greek Catholic Church is closely connected with the Greek Catholics (Uniates) of Ukraine, as Russian and Belarusian commentators are now given to repeating (Rubaltic.ru, January 19). Many of its priests were trained in western Ukraine, and unsurprisingly, they and their flocks have supported Ukraine since Putin launched his expanded invasion in February 2022, which is yet another reason for Moscow’s opposition to Catholicism in Belarus. (On these interrelationships, which undoubtedly inform fears among Belarusian and Russian officials, see EurAsia Daily, April 7, 2023; Dekoder, January 24, 2024.) Minsk and Moscow are inclined to view the Belarusian Catholics, therefore, as “a fifth column,” a group that could pose an immediate challenge to the Belarusian regime and its Russian ally. In line with  this view, Minsk has adopted new laws affording the government greater powers to interfere and limit the growth of Roman Catholicism in Belarus, which moves Moscow’s support (Legislation of CIS Countries, December 20, 2023).

Yet another issue animates this anti-Catholic campaign, although it may seem far removed. Both Minsk and Moscow are worried that some within the Belarusian Orthodox Church, which is officially an exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus under the Moscow Patriarchate, may seek to become independent of Moscow. This would involve gaining autocephaly as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church did in 2019 with the blessing of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople (see EDM, August 12, 2021). Several Belarusian Orthodox priests have fled to Lithuania and been taken under that patriarchate’s protection (Window on Eurasia, March 24, 2023). Neither the Roman Catholics of Belarus nor the Vatican have any involvement with such moves. Russian and Belarusian commentators, however, are convinced that this drive is part of a broader Western effort to break ties between Belarus and Russia and project Western power more deeply into “the Russian world.” Consequently, such commentators argue that the actions of those seeking autocephaly are simply allies of the Roman Catholics and that Minsk and Moscow must attack both or face the prospect of the West stealing another march on “the Russian world” (Rubaltic.ru, January 19).

Many are likely to assume that this Belarusian-Russian attack on Roman Catholicism, however distasteful it may be, will not matter very much now that the world appears to be entering into a more tough-minded “realist” approach to international relations. Even in recent years, there has been a decline in attention to those who are victimized by the Belarusian or Russian state for religious reasons. The anti-Catholicism of Belarus and Russia, however, is different and likely to have other consequences in international relations. On the one hand, however dismissive realists may be about the power of the Pope, the Vatican, both directly and through its networks of bishops, is able to attract far more attention to the repression of its followers.  Similarly, objections from the Vatican are able to have an outsized impact on the countries where Catholics are numerous and followers of that denomination are found in the leading ranks of the realists. On the other hand, it is now obvious to an increasing number of people in the West that anti-Catholicism in Belarus and Russia is a euphemism for anti-Westernism. To the extent that that understanding spreads, it will be more difficult for Western leaders to ignore attacks on Catholics in the two Slavic countries, however “realist” they profess to be. Consequently, Western leaders are unlikely to be able to dismiss what Minsk and Moscow are saying about—and doing to—Catholics. This makes it likely that the current attacks will cast not only a dark but a long shadow on the future.