At its meeting on March 18, the Holy Synod of the Polish Orthodox Church decided to canonize the Katyn Martyrs.
The decision states: “Today, when we celebrate the 100th anniversary of our church independence, recalling the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325, the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II; on the basis of Holy Tradition, having studied the materials about the life and death of our brothers and sisters who died in Katyn and other places of death and displacement, the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church, in the name of the Holy Trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – ranks the following as saints and includes them in the diptych of saints of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church: Father Archpriest Col. Symon Fedorenko, Father Arch. Lt. Col. Viktor Romanovsky, Father Arch. Major Vladimir Ohab, as well as clergy and laity whose names are known only to Almighty God.”
The official canonization will take place on September 17, 2025, which will also be designated as their memorial day. This is the day on which the Soviet army entered Poland in 1939. A troparion in their honor has also been approved, as well as an icon. The Polish Church will inform local Orthodox churches about the canonization of the Katyn martyrs.
The Katyn massacre was a mass murder of twenty-two thousand Poles in 1940, committed by Soviet Chekists during the occupation of Poland by the Soviet Army. The color of the Polish nation was killed – many Polish soldiers, officers, large landowners, representatives of the intelligentsia, twenty university professors, three hundred doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers and journalists. Among the murdered were seven military chaplains, the Orthodox of whom are mentioned by name in the decision on canonization of the Polish Orthodox Church.
It is noteworthy that the decision of the Polish Synod does not mention in any way the circumstances and cause of the death of these people, in order to avoid mentioning Russia as the culprit. With this decision, the Polish Orthodox Church is clearly responding to the expectations of Polish society through this canonization to declare its attitude towards communist repressions in the national history of Poland, and on the other hand, by not naming the cause and perpetrators of the mass murder, it shows loyalty to the Russian Orthodox Church.
During the same session of the Holy Synod of the Polish Orthodox Church, other issues were also considered. Among the first was mentioned “familiarization with the problems contained in the letters of the Bulgarian Patriarch, the Romanian Patriarch and the Synod of the Orthodox Church in Greece”. The reports of the Commission for theological dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, the World Council of Churches and the Conference of European Churches were adopted, and personnel changes were made. A letter was sent to the Polish Minister of Education expressing concern about the restriction of religious education in schools.
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First published in this link of The European Times.
