gregorianka.belynichi@gmail.comThe Shrine of Our Lady of Białynicze
For centuries Białynicze on the Druts river, not far from Mogilev, was one of the most important Marian shrines of the old Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth – it was called the “Jasna Góra of Lithuania” and the “Częstochowa of Belarus”. Today the small Catholic parish is preparing to rebuild the destroyed shrine.
The image of Our Lady of Białynicze
The image shows Mary with the Child in the Hodegetria type – “She who shows the way”. Its origins are lost in legend. According to the Eastern tradition, the icon was brought to the Druts by monks fleeing Kyiv from the Tatar invasion of 1240. The Catholic tradition tells of a mysterious wandering painter who in the 1630s gave the Carmelites an image painted on a window shutter – the faithful saw an angel in him. According to the accounts, the image came to the Carmelites around 1635.
The image was venerated by Catholics and Orthodox alike. The faithful left votive offerings before it; the Grand Marshal of Lithuania, Krzysztof Zawisza, funded a costly robe for the image, and the Vice-Chancellor Kazimierz Lew Sapieha adorned the altar with jewels. The many gifts bore witness to how many of the faithful found comfort and graces before the image.
The Carmelites and the “Jasna Góra of Lithuania”
The first mention of a Catholic church in the area dates from 1579. In 1624 the Grand Chancellor of Lithuania, Lew Sapieha, founded a Carmelite monastery in Białynicze, and for more than two centuries the Carmelites cared for the miraculous image. The shrine was the easternmost pilgrimage centre of the Commonwealth.
When war with Muscovy broke out in 1654, the Carmelites took the image to a safer place – the fortress of Lachowicze in the Nowogródek voivodeship. There the image survived the siege of the fortress in 1660 and remained away from Białynicze for many decades. It returned to Białynicze in solemn procession only in 1760 – to a new brick church built especially to receive it.
The coronation of 1761
By a bull of 13 April 1756 Pope Benedict XIV permitted the coronation of the image. On 20 September 1761 the Bishop of Smolensk, Jerzy Mikołaj Hylzen, crowned it with papal crowns – and so Białynicze joined the ranks of the most important Marian shrines of the Commonwealth. According to Wikipedia, the image was re-crowned in 1856. At the end of the nineteenth century as many as ten thousand pilgrims a year came to Białynicze.
A time of trial
After the First Partition (1772) Białynicze found itself within the Russian Empire. In 1832, after the fall of the November Uprising, the tsarist authorities dissolved the Carmelite monastery. In the 1870s the church was taken from the Catholics and turned into an Orthodox church (sources give 1872 or 1876).
The fate of the original image is unknown. According to one account it was hidden by a Catholic priest before the church was taken over by the Orthodox; according to another it was lost in June 1941 during the evacuation of the museum in Mogilev. In 1924 the Bolsheviks closed the church and turned it into a museum of atheism, and in the 1960s the Soviet authorities blew up the church and the monastery buildings.
Copies of the image
The veneration of Our Lady of Białynicze survived thanks to copies of the image venerated in churches in Poland and Belarus. The best known are in the church in Novaya Mysh in Belarus (a copy from the second half of the seventeenth century), in the Carmelite church in Wola Gułowska and in the Carmelite church in Leszno Street in Warsaw. The Warsaw image is a copy of an earlier painting from 1641 that was lost during the Warsaw Uprising. There are also copies in Mogilev and in Księżyce, and the image from the Orthodox church in Snov is now kept by the Museum of Ancient Belarusian Culture in Minsk. Some scholars even believe that the image in Novaya Mysh may be the original.
Białynicze – the parish and the Catholic community
The Catholic parish in Białynicze was revived in the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union (sources give 1993 or 1995). Since the old church no longer existed, the faithful started with a modest chapel set up in a wooden house. In 2011, on the 250th anniversary of the coronation of the image, a solemn Holy Mass presided over by Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz was celebrated in Białynicze.
Today the Parish of Our Lady of Białynicze belongs to the Archdiocese of Minsk–Mohilev. Its parish priest is Fr Józef Sierpejka. The community is small, so the parish priest can take on the regular celebration of Masses for the intentions of the faithful from other countries – including Gregorian Masses, that is, thirty Masses day after day for one deceased person. Besides him, other priests of eastern Belarus also accept intentions.
Rebuilding the shrine
The community is preparing to rebuild the shrine – a design for a new church has been drawn up, and we present its visualisations on the home page. As the Polish portal PCh24 wrote in 2025, “the design is ready, and work will start soon”.
By requesting Holy Masses through gregorianka.com, you take part in this work: the offerings support the priests and the rebuilding of the Shrine of Our Lady of Białynicze. How to do this is described on the page how to request Gregorian Masses; the principles of the offering on the offering for Gregorian Masses page. You can read more about the initiative itself on the About us page, and make your request on the Request Gregorian Masses page.
Sources
Questions and answers
Where exactly is Białynicze?
In eastern Belarus, in the Mogilev region, on the Druts river, not far from Mogilev.
Can I come to Białynicze on pilgrimage?
The parish is active, although the old church no longer exists. Before coming, it is best to write to the parish to arrange the possibility of a Mass together.
The Shrine of Our Lady of Białynicze
For centuries Białynicze on the Druts river was one of the most important Marian shrines of the old Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, known as the “Częstochowa of Belarus”. The Carmelite church with the miraculous image of Our Lady, crowned in 1761, was destroyed in Soviet times.
Today the parish is rebuilding the shrine, and every Mass requested here supports this work.
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