In December 2020, the long-time head of Belarusian Catholics, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, retired. From January 2021, Bishop Kazimierz Wielikosielec was the temporary apostolic administrator in Belarus. On September 15 of this year, on the Solemnity of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Pope Francis appointed the current suffragan of the Diocese of Grodno, Bishop Józef Staniewski, to the office of Archbishop of Minsk-Mogilev. Thus, he established him as the head of the Catholic Church in Belarus.
Archbishop Józef Staniewski was born on April 4, 1969 in Zaniewicze in the Grodno region. He graduated from the gymnasium in Lutsk. Then, he studied at a military-technical university. In 1990, he was one of the first to apply to the Major Seminary which was founded in the same year. He was ordained a priest on June 17, 1995. After more than a year of pastoral ministry in the parish of St. Wenceslas in Wołkowysk, he was sent to study at the Catholic University of Lublin, where in 1999 he obtained an ecclesiastical licentiate in canon law. At the same time, Fr. Józef Staniewski was a scholarship recipient of the John Paul II Foundation.
In the years 2007-2013 he was responsible for the pastoral formation of young priests in the diocese of Grodno. In 1999 he became prefect and on June 23, 2005 rector of the Major Seminary in Grodno. Since 2009 he has been the coordinator of the national pastoral care of vocations at the Episcopal Conference of Belarus.
On November 29, 2013, Pope Francis appointed him bishop. He was consecrated bishop on February 1, 2014 in the Grodno Cathedral and became an auxiliary bishop of this diocese. For the motto of his episcopal ministry he chose the words "the joy of the Gospel".
The appointment of Bishop Józef Staniewski as the head of the Catholic Church in Belarus is a great joy for the John Paul II Foundation. While studying at the Catholic University of Lublin, he lived for four years in the Foundation House. Through the intercession of St. John Paul II, we ask God for the necessary graces in the service of the Church in Belarus and in the universal Church. We also ask archbishop for a special blessing for the management, graduates, scholarship holders and benefactors of the Foundation.
Fr. Jan Strzałka
