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A holy bishop is murdered for unifying East and West

Saint Josaphat died for something few in his era died for—ecumenism. In fact, the word ecumenism did not even exist when Josaphat was martyred. Josaphat was born in Ukraine but grew to manhood working a trade in Vilnius, Lithuania. In his late teens, he felt called to be a monk, so he rejected an offer of marriage and joined a monastery in Vilnius in 1604. Josaphat’s austerities, intelligence, and prayerfulness made him a natural leader, and he was duly ordained a deacon and priest and earned a reputation as an effective preacher.

But it was a historic decision by Orthodox religious leaders, about ten years before Josaphat became a monk, that would bend the arc of his life and eventually lead to his death. In 1595 the Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev and five other Orthodox bishops representing millions of Ruthenian (Ukrainian and Belarusian) faithful met in the city of Brest and signed a declaration of their intention to enter into union with the Bishop of Rome. The Pope accepted their conversion from Orthodox to Catholic, while allowing them to...

Attributions
By Paul R. Burley - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99251063; By Fczarnowski - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35660722; By babizhet - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133864128; By Kustoszka - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109204886; https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/ee/7b/b87f721b06ceb15136b79cce5583.jpgGallery: https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/V0032339.htmlWellcome Collection gallery (2018-04-02): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cwuyhqux CC-BY-4.0, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36602207; By Mykola Swarnyk - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38109392; By Birczanin - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26443728