BELARUS: Catholic Priest Anatol Parakhnevich suffered heart attack in pre-trial detention
Case exposed at the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Roundtable in Washington on 28 April 2026. Action requested (See below)
Catholic priest Anatol Parakhnevich in pre-trial detention in Belarus (Credit: Katolik Life)
HRWF (29.04.2026) – At mid-March, masked security officers in Belarus arrested a Catholic priest named Anatol Parakhnevich in his parish in the region of Minsk. The police searched his home and the Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, sealed the house and kept the keys to the church for a week. They are holding him in pre-trial detention in Minsk’s KGB Investigation Prison.
The priest is 65 years old and he has recently suffered a heart attack but remains in a detention centre in serious condition.
According to available information, the priest has been charged with “treason against the state” but the details are unknown.
Fr Yuri Yasevich, spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, said the Church has no information about Fr Parakhnevich’s case.
As he has no relatives, this further complicates obtaining information about him.
Local believers think the priest may have been accused of helping preserve the memory of Polish citizens who died on the territory of present-day Belarus in the first half of the 20th century.
Anatol Parakhnevich will be 66 June 16, 1960. He grew up as an orphan, was raised in a children’s home and received his religious education in Poland. He was ordained as a priest in 1995. Since 2007, he has served in Alkovichy, where he founded a small museum at the church.
The arrest of Fr Anatol Parakhnevich came four months after the regime freed two other Catholic priests: Fr Henryk Okolotovich and Fr Andrei Yukhnevich. They had been sentenced to long prison sentences in closed trials. They were finally pardoned and released from their labour camp in November 2025. They were immediately taken to Minsk airport and travelled to Rome. They both remain there, unable to return to resume their ministry in Belarus.
Since Fr Okolotovich’s release and exile, the regime continues to seize his property to pay debts the court said he owed.
We encourage you to write to the Belarusian embassy in your country to ask for his release due to his health conditions and to grant him a public trial with the attorney of his choice.
