For the first time, prayer at the site of death of victims of repression did not take place throughout Belarus. Homel was the last to give in.
An important long-standing tradition has been interrupted in Homel. Here, for the first time, on Dziady (All Souls' Day), Catholic believers were unable to pray at the cross installed at the site of mass burials of victims of Soviet repressions, writes Katolik.life.
Annually since the 1990s, on All Souls' Day, November 2, Catholics gathered for prayer at the 9th kilometer of the Chernihiv highway on the outskirts of Homel. Among those shot in these forests were many believers, including Catholic and Orthodox priests.
In recent years, Bishop Kazimierz Wielikosielec led the service at this location. In early 2026, he passed away.
As Catholic believers in Belarus learned, this year, for the first time, local authorities did not grant permission to hold a service on the Chernihiv highway.
Homel remained the last place in Belarus where Catholics held a service at the burial site of victims of repressions. Since 2023, in Kuropaty near Minsk — the site of the most mass executions of the repressed — no prayer is held, at least not publicly, which previously was also annual and took place with the participation of bishops, including the Apostolic Nuncio, a representative of the Vatican.
Earlier, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz called Kuropaty "the Golgotha of the Belarusian people" and noted that this place is an integral part of the nation's history, without understanding and evaluating which it has no future.
The memory of the victims of Soviet repressions in Homel contradicts the ideological stance, according to which only Nazis carried out executions in this place during the war, while mass repressions by Soviet authorities are silenced.
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