Francis Budris
| Francis Budris | |
|---|---|
 Будрис Франциск.jpg | |
| Native name | Франтишек Игнатьевич Будрис |
| Born | October 14, 1882 Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire |
| 💀Died | December 16, 1937 (aged 55) Ufa, Bashkir ASSR, USSRDecember 16, 1937 (aged 55) |
| 🏳️ Nationality |  Russian Empire Soviet Union |
| 💼 Occupation | Catholic priest |
| 👴 👵 Parent(s) | Francis Budrevich (father) Domitilla, née Schlager (mother) |
Francis Budris Russian: Франтишек Игнатьевич Будрис; 14 October 1882 – 16 December 1937) was a Roman Catholic priest.
Family and education
Born 14 October 1882 to a Catholic peasant family of Francis Budrevich and Domitilla, née Schlager. He was baptized three days later by the rector of the local Meshkuk parish, Fr. Vikenty Schlager. The godfather was Fr. Schlager, and the godmother was the widow Barbara Raubitskaya. In December 1902 he passed the exam for the title of a pharmacy student. He graduated from the Catholic St. Petersburg Theological Seminary (1907).
Priesthood
In the spring of 1907, he was ordained a priest. Since 27 July 1907 – vicar of the parish in Irkutsk. The vicar arrived in Irkutsk on 16 September 1907. Since 1908, he also taught the Law of God to Catholic children at the Alexander real school. On 31 January 1909, by order of Archbishop A. Vnukovsky, he was transferred as rector of the parish to Tyumen, where he also taught the Law of God at the local real school, women's gymnasium and city school. Its parishioners were mainly Poles, Germans, Lithuanians who lived in the Urals, as well as foreign specialists and their families who worked at the Ural enterprises. After the start of World War I, they were joined by Catholic prisoners of war.
From 22 February 1919, he was rector of the parish in Perm and acting dean: his dean's office included parishes in Vyatka, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, and Tagil. On 8 June 1920, Bishop Jan Cieplyak officially appointed him dean. He was engaged in pastoral work during the difficult years of economic devastation and the arrests of the clergy by the Bolshevik authorities.
On July 14, 1921, in addition to Perm, he was appointed to manage the Vyatka parish. On October 18, 1921, in addition to posts in Perm and Vyatka, he was appointed to head the Yekaterinburg parish. On December 13, 1921, he was also assigned to Chelyabinsk. In December 1921, Archbishop Tseplyak released Fr. Budrys from the parish in Vyatka, but appointed him to head the Tyumen parish.
From February 8, 1922, he was dean, rector of the Perm church and head of the Yekaterinburg and Tyumen churches, then he also headed the church in Tobolsk, and from June 1923 in Vyatka. In 1924, he refused to go on holiday to Lithuania, fearing that the authorities would not allow him to return to his flock. In April 1925, he was arrested in Yekaterinburg as a hostage and was under arrest for a month.
After 1924, he served the Catholic communities of Tobolsk, Tyumen, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Zlatoust, Kurgan, Ishim, Ufa, Samara, Kazan, and Vyatka. After the churches in Tobolsk, Tyumen, Kurgan, and Ishim were closed by 1930, he continued to visit the Catholics who lived there, and served Mass in apartments. He also performed services in his own apartment for those believers who were afraid to visit the churches. He organized catechesis under the guise of friendly meetings in apartments and "picnics" outside the city, where adults and children went. In 1934 to 1937, he was practically the only priest who served Catholics in the vast territory between the Volga and the Ob. Until 1937, he served as rector of the only Polish Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Ufa.
Arrest and death
On 17 June 1937, he was arrested in Ufa along with members of the parish council, accused of "espionage for French intelligence and the Vatican on the instructions of the French intelligence officer Bishop Neve" and organized insurrectionary activities against the Soviet government under the guise of religious work, using religious fanaticism of parishioners. According to one of the parishioners, Fr. Francis:
they beat him hard during interrogations, demanding a confession that he was a spy, and even kept him in the snow, so that he got frostbite on his legs and got pneumonia. However, each time, returning to the cell, Fr. Budris constantly prayed, supported his cellmates in every possible way, repeating: "God will not leave us…".
On 11 November 1937, he was sentenced under Art. 58-10, 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to be shot. On December 16, 1937 he was shot in the Ufa prison. Together with Fr. Francis at that time, killed another 189 parishioners from different cities. The burial of the executed in Ufa at that time was carried out at the Sergievsky cemetery of the city, but the exact location of the graves of the executed was not recorded.
By the definition of the Military Tribunal of the South Ural Military District of 14 January 1958, the decision of the troika of the NKVD of the BASSR of 11 December 1937 in relation to Fr. F. Budris was canceled and the case was dismissed due to the absence of corpus delicti in his actions, that is, he was found completely innocent of what he was previously charged with.
Beatification
In 2003, the process of beatification (ranking blessed) of Priest Francis Budris officially began.
Links
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