Joseph Semashko
Joseph Semashko (; ; ; 25 December 1798 – 23 November 1868) was an Eastern Catholic priest and bishop who played a central role in the highly controversial conversion of the Ruthenian Uniate Church of the western provinces of the Russian Empire to Russian Orthodoxy in 1837–1839. Subsequently, he became an archbishop in the Russian Orthodox hierarchy, elevated to the Metropolitan bishop of Vilnius and Lithuania in 1852. Early life and education Semashko was born and raised in right-bank Ukraine, in Pavlivka near Illintsi in the Kiev Governorate (now in Vinnytsia Oblast of Ukraine). His father Yosyf (1776–1856) was originally a farmer and trader, then became a Uniate clergyman in 1811. As there were almost no Catholic churches in the region, Semashko attended Orthodox services more often than Catholic in his childhood. His mother tongue was Ruthenian and he acquired Polish at school. He graduated from the school in Nemyriv, and then from the Catholic Seminary in Vilnius. At the age of 21 he was ordained a Uniate priest. In 1822, he became an assessor of the Roman Catholic Spiritual College (the church board of administration, responsible for religious affairs for Catholics of both rites) in St. Petersburg, working in the Uniate department of the College. This appointment was influenced by his relatively good command of the Russian language, rare among Uniate clergy at the time. During his stay in Petersburg, he established extensive contacts, including with the head of the department of foreign denominations at the Ministry of Public Education, , and with the Minister of Education, Alexander Shishkov. Delighted by the splendor of the Orthodox churches in the Russian capital, and at the same time alienated from the Roman Catholic clergy, which in his view treated the Uniates in a condescending way, he adopted a Russian identity. Uniate Church and Synod of Polotsk After the second and third partitions of Poland, Russia acquired a large Uniate population in Belarus and Ukraine, historical Rus lands that had been controlled by Roman Catholic Lithuania and Poland for centuries. By the end of Catherine II's reign, roughly half of this population was converted, with 1.5 million Uniate faithful remaining (mostly in Volhynia and Belarus). By the mid-1820s, the Uniates remained a significant religious group, with nearly 1500 parishes and over 75 monasteries of the Basilian Order. In 1827, Semashko wrote a memorandum advocating for the unification of remaining Uniate parishes in the Russian Empire with the Orthodox Church. The memorandum made the following suggestions: liquidation of two of the existing four Uniate dioceses, subordination of the affairs of the Uniate Church to the Holy Governing Synod, reorganization of the Basilian Order along the Orthodox model: the subordination of monasteries to the bishops of the dioceses in which they were located, creation of schools for children of Uniate clergy not led by Basilians. The plan was read and enthusiastically approved by Emperor Nicholas I. Semashko was consecrated bishop of Mstislaw and head of the Belarusian consistory in 1829 and bishop of Lithuania