Kazimierz Cardinal Świątek
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Kazimierz Świątek (Kazimier Śviontak, Belarusian Казімер Сьвёнтак; b. October 14, 1914 in Walga, Estonia) is a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, former Archbishop of Minsk-Mahiloŭ, and Apostolic Administrator of Pinsk.
After completing seminary in Pinsk, he was ordained a priest in 1939 and sent to the parish of Pružany in the diocese of Pinsk.
He was arrested by the NKVD in April 1941, and imprisoned on death row in Brest. Świątek escaped from prison taking advantage of the confusion caused by the Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), and returned to Pružany.
In December 1944, the NKVD arrested him for a second time. The following year he was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in the Gulag, and spent nine years in Siberia and the north of the Soviet Union, working in the taiga and mines. After his release in June 1954, he returned to Pinsk.
In 1988 he was named a chaplain of Pope John Paul II. In 1991, he was appointed Archbishop of Minsk-Mahiloŭ and Apostolic Administrator of Pinsk. John Paul II proclaimed Świątek cardinal in 1994.
