31 August 2020, 14:53 | Catholic.BY
The Vicar General of the Minsk-Mogilev Archdiocese, Bishop Yury Kasabutski, has officially announced that on 31 August, the border guards of the Republic of Belarus refused entry into the country to the Metropolitan Of Minsk-Mogilev Archbishop Tadevuš Kandrusievič, Chairman of the Conference of Belarusian Catholic Bishops.
Bishop Yury Kasabutski stated that on Monday, 31 August, Archbishop Tadevuš Kandrusievič was returning from a business trip abroad.
At the Kuźnica-Bruzgi border crossing, the border guards refused to let the head of the Belarusian Catholic Archiepiscopacy into the country without explaining the reason for it.
The Chairman of the Conference of Belarusian Catholic Bishops and the Metropolitan of Minsk-Mogilev Archbishop Tadevuš Kandrusievič is a citizen of the Republic of Belarus.
Tadevuš Kandrusievič was born on 3 January 1946 in the village of Odelsk near Hrodna. After finishing middle school, he studied at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the Hrodna Pedagogical Institute. In 1964, he continued his studies at the Energy Engineering Faculty of Leningrad Technological University, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1970 and received a degree in Engineering and Mechanics. He worked as an engineer at a grinding factory in Vilnius.
In 1976, he entered the Theological Seminary in Kaunas, which he graduated from in 1981, and was ordained a priest in May of the same year. From 1981 to 1988, he served as a priest in various parishes in the Vilnius region.
On 13 February 1988, he was appointed pastor of the Hrodna parishes of the Holy Mother (former Franciscan church) and St. Francis Xavier (Cathedral).
On 25 July 1989, Pope John Paul II appointed Tadevuš Kandrusievič as Titular Bishop of Hippo-Dzarytsia and Apostolic Administrator of the Minsk Diocese for Catholics in Belarus.
Bishop Tadevuš Kandrusievič founded the Higher Theological Seminary of Hrodna, facilitated the return and opening of about 100 previously closed churches in our country, and also helped to publish the “Ordo Missae” and the “Catechism” in the Belarusian language, thus initiating the revival of the Catholic Church in Belarus.
From 1991 to 2007, Tadevuš Kandrusievič served as a pastor in Russia. On 21 September 2007, Pope Benedict XVI returned the hierarch to his homeland, appointing him Archbishop Metropolitan of Minsk and Mogilev.
On 3 June 2015, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Belarus elected Archbishop Tadevuš Kandrusievič as its Chairman.
Archbishop Tadevuš Kandrusievič is a member of the Special Council for Europe under the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops of the Catholic Church, the Congregation for the Clergy, and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. He is the Vice President of the Eurasian Branch of the International Association for Religious Freedom (MARS).
