"Declared Independence Of Belarus In US Congress"

Rector of the first Belarusian church in exile Mikalai Lapitski was born on December 13, 1907.

Mikalai Lapitski was born in a Belarusian Orthodox family in the village of Hreliki in Vileika county, Vilna governorate on December 13, 1907. During the First World War he was with his parents in the evacuation in Russia. After returning, he entered the gymnasium in Vileika in 1918. After the graduation, he entered the Vilna Orthodox Seminary. During his studies at the seminary, he took an interest in Zmitrok Biadulia’s works.

He graduated from the seminary in August of 1930, continued his studies at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology of the University of Warsaw. On July 12, 1932, he married Valiantsina Trafimiuk, the daughter of a rich landowner from Bialystok district. He received a diploma and was ordained a priest in July 1934. Soon he defended his master's thesis on "The Orthodoxy in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the time of Władysław Jagiełło."

He was transferred to the remote village of Stsefanpol for using the Belarusian language and his patriotic sermons. During the Second World War, he was engaged in the search and release of Belarusian prisoners of war from concentration camps. In 1942, he participated in the All-Belarusian Sobor, which proclaimed the creation of the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. He lived in exile since 1944. In 1946, together with the Belarusian Church Council, he organized a congress of clergy and believers in Regensburg, which was opposed to the accession of the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church to the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.

After resettlement in the US, he was the dean of the parish of St. Euphrosyne of Polotsk in the South River. He published the magazine Tsarkouny Svetach.

Mikalai Lapitski is known for being the first to declare independence of the Belarusian People's Republic in the US Congress. Subsequently, the priest regularly read out the BPR's Charter of Independence to the US parliamentarians.

He died on August 8, 1976 in the Belarusian sanatorium in Glen Spey (New York). He was buried in the Belarusian cemetery in South River.