Nearly a month after the detention of Catholic priest Anatol Parakhnevich, the Belarusian authorities still refuse to disclose information about his whereabouts or possible charges. Forum 18 attempted to find out where the priest is being held.
Spokesman for the Conference of Catholic Bishops Yury Yasievich acknowledged that the Church has no information about the priest’s fate.
“We know that he was detained and that his house was sealed, but we do not know where he is or what charges have been brought against him”, he said.
Attempts to obtain information from the authorities proved unsuccessful. A duty officer at the Vileyka district police department refused to answer questions and hung up. Phones at the KGB office for Minsk and the Minsk region went unanswered. An official from the office of the Commissioner for Religious Affairs, Andrei Aryayeu, said: “I also have no information” — and ended the conversation. Head of the ideology department of the Minsk regional administration Volha Topdzemir replied: “I do not know what you want from me” — and also hung up. The information department of the Minsk regional police did not respond to written questions from Forum 18.
The 65-year-old Anatol Parakhnevich was detained on March 16 in the village of Alkovichy in the Vileyka district, where he had served for nearly 20 years. Security forces searched his house and the Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary. The KGB sealed his father’s house and confiscated the keys to the church. They were returned only a week later, causing the cancellation of the Sunday service on March 22 because the parish had no access to the church.
It is believed that he may be held in the KGB detention center in Minsk. The priest has no relatives, which further complicates efforts to obtain information about him.
Anatol Parakhnevich was born in Belarus on June 16, 1960. He grew up an orphan and received theological education in Białystok, Poland. In June 1995, he was ordained as a Catholic priest and served in parishes in Rakau and Zaslaul in the Minsk region. Since 2007, Father Parakhnevich has served as priest of the Parish of the Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Alkovichy. He also founded a small museum at the church. In 2025, he celebrated the 30th anniversary of his ordination.
On June 19, 2020, the district newspaper Shlyakh Peramohi published a positive article about Father Parakhnevich. It described him as “a shepherd of human souls, a historian and a collector of antiquities”.
On May 22, 2022, a hostile article on the News.by website claimed that Father Parakhnevich had been among the participants in a “secret” event dedicated to Poland’s Constitution Day on May 3. The event had been organized by the Polish Embassy in Minsk, which had “strangely” decided to hold it at the Ukrainian Embassy.
