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Belarusian Christian Democracy launches campaign of solidarity with jailed Catholic priest Uladzislaw Lazar

Belarusian Christian Democracy (BCD), an unregistered opposition party, has announced that it launches a campaign of solidarity with Catholic priest Uladzislaw Lazar reportedly held in a KGB jail.

“We believe that the arrest of Father Uladzislaw is an attempt to intimidate or blackmail Roman Catholic priests and believers in Belarus,” the party says in a statement.

BCD has urged the Belarusian KGB to publish detailed information about the case.

According to the party, members the Holy Spirit Descension Parish in Barysaw, Minsk region, say that the parish minister disappeared about two month ago, and therefore a formal charge should have been brought against him.

BCD has demanded that the priest should be immediately released and

called on all Catholic believers and all Belarusians to send postcards of support to the KGB detention center in Minsk.

Yury Sanko, acting spokesman for the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Belarus, confirmed earlier this week that the Rev. Uladzislaw Lazar was being in held in the KGB jail.

‘We are aware of this, but we do not know exactly what he was arrested for,” Mr. Sanko told the Belarus Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty when reached by phone on Monday.

This case is being dealt with by governmental agencies and attended to by the Apostolic Nunciature to Belarus, Mr. Sanko noted.

He said that he did not have enough information to link the arrest of the priest to Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s recent statement. The Belarusian leader revealed on July 26 that authorities had recently arrested an officer of a Belarusian intelligence agency who had supplied information to “foreign states” through representatives of the Catholic Church.

Uladzislaw Lazar, a citizen of Belarus, graduated from Hrodna Seminary and then completed a theological course in Poland. He served in Maryina Horka and Rudzensk, Minsk region, before being appointed minister of the Holy Spirit Descension Parish in Barysaw in April 2013. //BelaPAN