A court in Belarus has sentenced a 66-year-old Catholic priest to three years in prison after he publicly opposed Russia's invasion of Ukraine and helped Ukrainian refugees, according to the Associated Press as reported by the National Catholic Reporter and the Religion Media Centre. Father Anatoly Parakhnevich, the parish priest of Alkovichy in the Vileika district of north-western Belarus, was also fined.
The sentence was handed down in October at a closed-door trial and became known on Thursday 5 November, according to the Associated Press. Father Parakhnevich was convicted of "insulting the authorities" and "extremism", and he rejects every charge and says he will appeal, according to the reports. Because the trial was held in private, the detailed grounds of the conviction have not been released, and the Associated Press reported no comment from the Vatican or the Belarusian government.
According to the Viasna Human Rights Centre, which designated Father Parakhnevich a political prisoner, he had openly opposed Russia's war in Ukraine and condemned Belarus's role in supporting it, while calling for peace and repentance and helping to collect aid for Ukrainian refugees. He has been in custody since his arrest in March, when masked men presumed to be Belarusian security agents detained him, and he suffered a heart attack while detained, according to Viasna.
The case is the latest move in the authorities' crackdown on critical voices, the rights group said on 5 November, according to the National Catholic Reporter. Viasna currently counts 884 political prisoners held in Belarus, and the Associated Press reports that dozens of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant clergy have been jailed, silenced or exiled since the protests that followed the disputed 2020 election. Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called the sentence heartbreaking and politically motivated, according to reports.
Father Parakhnevich was born in 1960, grew up an orphan and received his religious education in Poland before his ordination in 1995, according to reports. His appeal, if it goes ahead, will be the next step in a case that has drawn attention well beyond Belarus — a reminder of how the war in Ukraine continues to reach into the churches and villages of the country that helped launch it.
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