Important is the role of bishops M. Reinys and T. Matulionis in spreading the cult of Divine Mercy. In 1940, Mečislovas Reinys was appointed auxiliary bishop to the ordinary of Vilnius, R. Jałbrzykowski. With the invasion of nazis and then soviets, he had to take over the ruling of the archdiocese twice. It is archbishop Reinys who, on May 29, 1942, approves the Divine Mercy Chaplet prayer. This shrine, at that time still the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, was in 1946-47 the last place in Vilnius where Father Sopoćko served before his permanent retreat to Bialystok. After noticing that the service-goers do not understand Polish nor Lithuanian well, the priest appealed to the ruler of the archdiocese, suggesting the introduction of Russian language for the services. The archbishop, aware of the need of the Russian-speaking people that arrived in Lithuania after second Soviet occupation being able to find their way to God, to receive the sacraments, gives his consent. In April of the same year, when Father Sopoćko served still at the Church of St. Johns, the archbishop accepted another of priest’s requests, allowing the celebration of the Feast of Divine Mercy on the first Sunday after Easter, which Jesus had urged through Sister Faustina. It was the first celebration of the Feast of Divine Mercy, included in the universal liturgical calendar of the Church only since year 2000.

Fr. It is quite possible that the archbishop Reinys was not the only to know the Apostle of Divine Mercy. It is very likely that bishop Matulionis had a personal encounter with Father Sopoćko because Father Juozapas Labukas, the then prelate of diocese of Kaišiadorys, was Sopoćko’s classmate at the Vilnius seminary and his collaborator in Vilnius region. About Sister Faustina, who lived in Vilnius, the apparitions of Jesus she experienced there, and about the message of Divine Mercy bishop Matulionis learned from the Benedictine sisters. Because of his personal consecration and devotion to the Sacred Heart, he immediately embraced the message about the unfathomable mercy flowing from this Heart. He had a copy of Divine Mercy painting in his private chapel, and on June 6, 1943, in his heartfelt letter from Kaišiadorys to a friend and priest Vincas Dainius he inserted a picture of Merciful Jesus, promoting the devotion: “I send you a Divine Mercy image. Cry out to the Mercy of God, He will protect you.”

The painting of the Merciful Jesus, which currently is exposed above the central altar, was completed in June-July of 1934, at which time the National Eucharistic Congress was held in Kaunas from June 28 to July 1, culminating in the signing of the Act of Consecration of Lithuania to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on July the 1st. Among the many signatures below the consecratory text were those of the President of Lithuania, A. Smetona, and bishops M. Reinys, T. Matulionis and V. Borisevičius.

For more than 10 years this shrine is the place of a perpetual Adoration of Blessed Sacrament. No doubt that Bl. Teofilius would rejoice in it, after having been imprisoned many times and not always having the opportunity to celebrate Mass in places of imprisonment, he longed for the Eucharist. In 1937, on the 550th anniversary of the Baptism of Lithuania, by his zealous care began the perpetual Adoration at the monastery of Benedictine nuns in Kaunas. “O come, let us adore Him!”

First time from 18 December 1945, Telšiai bishop Borisevičius was detained in this prison (more about the prison: https://www.journals.vu.lt/gr/article/view/35702) for six days on the accusation of anti-soviet activities and contacts with partisans, with attempt to recruit him. Having failed to break him, they released him for he would make up his mind. Following his meeting with archbishop Reinys, 3 January 1946, V. Borisevičius wrote to the chiefs of NKGB (MGB) prison: “After what I have been through these days, the words of the Gospel of St. John (10, 11), that ‘The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,’ moved me deeply. I therefore declare that the denouncements are totally incompatible with my title, my ministry, and my conscience, and I categorically refuse to do so. If I have committed a crime, it is for me, not for someone else, to atone for it. That is what my religion tells.” Knowingly or not, V. Borisevičius was arrested for the second time on the day of archbishops Reinys’ 62nd birthday, 5 February. He was tortured and interrogated. Almost 7 months later, on 28 August, the LSSR MVD military tribunal, a repressive structure of the occupational regime, sentences the Telšiai bishop to death and the next day he is transferred to Lukiškės Prison.

Precisely one year after Bishop Borisevičius’ first arrest, on 18 December 1946, T. Matulionis, Bishop of Kaišiadorys, was arrested and imprisoned there until November 1947. He was accused of having forbidden priests to announce political information in churches, of having warned Catholic youth not to join pioneer and komsomol organisations, and of having urged them to help the victims of the war and the deportations. He was put to interrogations. Among his answers given to the interrogators one can read: “I confess that my letters to the faithful were against bolshevism, against the soviet government. […] The reason that prompted me to write these appeals was my disapproval of the policy of the soviet government in the religious matter; in my opinion, the soviet government persecuted religion, and that is why I urged the faithful to pray for the non-recurrence of 1940, when Lithuania was incorporated into the Soviet Union. […] And if the Soviet government did return to Lithuania, I wanted the faithful Lithuanians to adhere strictly to their religion and not to succumb to the anti-religious propaganda of the bolsheviks and the organisations they established.” Since Bishop Matulionis was well versed in the canons of the Church and Soviet law, the interrogators have not succeeded to collect the trial material. Thus the decision was taken by the Special Council in Moscow (Осо́бое совеща́ние при МГБ СССР) in 1947, which sentenced the Kaišiadorys bishop to seven years’ in the special regime Vladimir prison, to which he was deported from Vilnius on 19 November.

12 June 1947, archbishop M. Reinys is arrested by soviet authorities for “acting as an intermediary to the traitors of Homeland, participation in an anti-soviet and nationalist organisation and anti-soviet agitation.” From the very beginning of the second soviet occupation, attempts were made to recruit the archbishop by blackmailing him about the fate of his captured relatives. Many of M. Reinys family members were deported in 1941: brothers Kazimieras and Jonas, sisters Emilija ir Leokadija. The regime wished to make him sign an appeal to the Forest brothers so they would come out. Archbishop Reinys justified his categorical refusal to do so based on the canons of the Church that forbade the interference in politics. He was put to interrogation. In his report of 16 June 1947 a soviet interrogator Golytsin stated: “Question: What has prompted you to write anti-soviet, or as you call it, anti-bolshevik – anti-communist articles? Response: I wrote the anti-bolshevik articles in the press quite consciously, as a person opposed to the Bolshevik ideology and worldview.” Sentenced the same year to eight years of imprisonment at the harsh regime Vladimir prison (rehabilitated in 1989), he dies under unknown circumstances when his period of detention was nearing completion.

Built in 1904, during yet Tsarist Russia era, it was at the time the most modern prison in the empire. A number of prominent Lithuanian personalities were imprisoned here, including: the author of Lithuanian national anthem V. Kudirka, Lithuanian female writer Žemaitė, the signatories of Lithuanian Independence Act of 1918 such as Jonas Vileišis, Mykolas Biržiška, and the leader of Lithuanian resistance movement, following the second soviet occupation, Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas; it was also used for detention of Lithuanian political prisoners and members of resistance movement; during the nazis occupation here were detained Jewish people before them being taken to Paneriai execution range.

A tsarist-era prison with the Church of St. Nicolas the Wonderworker can be a reminder to us of the first, one year, sentence to Bl. Teofilius in 1910 because he baptised an infant born in a mixed Orthodox and Catholic family. Since the Tsarist authorities did not imprison Catholic priests for denominational offences, the sentence was allowed to be served in a monastery in St. Petersburg. As for bl. Teofilius, he did not consider such a restriction of liberty as a punishment, but rather as a meaningful retreat, using this time also to reflect on misunderstandings and obstacles to salvation caused by the division of Christians. Then, very soon after his secret episcopal ordination in 1929, he was imprisoned several times in bolshevik Russia: in Solowetsky Monastery turned into prison camp, then moved to a prison in Leningrad, and then later to a camp on Lake Ladoga. There he worked extremely hard physical labour with days when he could carry up to 12 m3 firewood on his shoulders over branches and stones a hundred metres or more from the forest to the road. This work made him disabled. In 1933, after Lithuanian government took steps to arrange a prisoner exchange, the bishop (since 1929) was returned to Lithuania, together with other Lithuanian priests imprisoned in bolshevik Russia. The group of prisoners sent to Russia in exchange of Lithuanian priests also included the future leader of soviet Lithuania, A. Sniečkus. Despite the hardships and sufferings that he endured, bishop Matulionis, seeing the importance of the mission, will all his life have a burning desire to go back to Russia.

The servant of God M. Reinys was imprisoned in Lukiškės Prison in 1919, for the speech he gave on the first anniversary of Lithuania’s Independence. He was arrested and taken to Lukiškės by the bolsheviks, in whose hands Vilnius had fallen at the time. Later, he was detained as a hostage with other Lithuanians until July, first in Daugavpils and then in Smolensk. After the exchange of prisoners between Lithuanian and Russian governments, Fr. M. Reinys regained his freedom and returned to his homeland. Based on P. Dogelis memoirs and Reinys’ own accounts, the difficulties and trials of this first imprisonment and liberation were described by P. Dovydaitis in his jubilee essay “A Letter to Bishop Mečislovas Reinys on the Occasion of His 50th Birthday Anniversary”: “You were a needle in the eye of the bolsheviks who took Vilnius. For you were not only a dry ‘stubengelert’, i. e. not only a bureau scientist and teacher, but also a public figure. As such, if you had the opportunity to give a public lecture, you did not flirt with bolshevism, as some Catholics did. That is why the bolsheviks first attacked you in their “rags”, and when they were forced to flee, they took you as hostage, along with the other more prominent Lithuanians in Vilnius. That meant that your comparative weight was outstanding even then. After your arrest on 23 February 1919, you weren’t released before exactly five months later. As a psychologist by profession and not much talkative to interviewers that solicit you, you called this five month period of your life, when answering one of them, a period of ‘specific pleasure’, describing it in one sentence: “In 1919, during five months, the bolsheviks gave me a good opportunity to get to know at their expense the prisons of Vilnius, Daugavpils and Smolensk, to personally experience their pleasures… with all their bugs, and thus to get know the psychology of a prisoner well.”

Bishop Borisevičius was imprisoned here for the last months of his life, after his death sentence, from 29 August 1946. On that day, the Church commemorates the Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, of whom it is written: “He himself was not the Light, but he came to bear witness about the Light.” (Jn 1, 8) At the beginning of his priestly journey, in 1913 in Kalvarija, Borisevičius served as a prison chaplain, on 18 November 1946 he took his last steps as a prisoner himself.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
And with the rich in his death,
Though he had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in his mouth. (Is 53,9)