Cardinal
Kazimierz Swiatek, former head of the Roman Catholic Church in Belarus and now
apostolic administrator for the Pinsk Diocese, turns 95 on
October 21, BelaPAN reported. He will conduct
a mass in the Pinsk Cathedral on his birthday.
Born in Valga, Estonia,
on October 21, 1914, Kazimierz Swiatek studied at the Saint Thomas Aquinas
Seminary in Pinsk, now in the Brest
region in Belarus,
before being appointed to head the Pruzhany parish.
He was arrested by the NKVD twice: first in April 1941 and then again in December
1944. Following his second arrest, the priest was sentenced to 10 years in
Soviet labor camps, a sentence he served in Siberia and the KomiRepublic.
Following his release in June 1954, he served as pastor of the Pinsk parish. In April 1991, Msgr. Swiatek
was appointed as archbishop of the Minsk
and Mahilyow Archdiocese and papal administrator of the Pinsk Diocese.
He was relieved of his duties as head of the Catholic Church in Belarus
in June 2006.
Cardinal Swiatek was awarded France's
highest civilian award, the legion of honor, in November 2006. He became the
first person in Belarus to
receive the French award since Belarus
gained independence following the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
