"Curriculum vitae et mortis" of priest Vladas Mažonas MIC

In this paper, the author sums up the sources related to the biography of Vladas Mažonas (Vladislovas Mažonavičius, 1881–1945), a friair of the Congregation of Marian Fathers, examines the circumstances of his arrest and death, and outlines his personality. Priest Mažonas was considerable intellectual support to the Congregatio of Marian Fathers: he edited its newspapers, was a popular contributor to them, a pedagogue, who was capable of improving teachers' qualifcation and used to engage in extracurricular activities of pupils' organisations. From 1934 to 1939, he belonged to the Eastr-rite (Uniate) Catholic Church and proselytised the Russians in Lithuania and China; in 1938 he lived in Japan. In June 1941, when the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania, Mažonas was arrested and deported to a labour camp in Krasnoyarsk region. There he almost died of diseases and exhaustion because he would share his meagre daily food allowance with other prisoners. The Special Council of the NKVD USSR did not approve the capital punishment that the officials of the Kraslag NKVD proposed for him. For almost a year until his death (21 January 1945) he had been nursed at the prison hospital in Butyrki, Moscow. Such an unexpexted turn in Mažonas' case can be explained by the fact that early in 1943 British diplomats became concerned with his liberation. Mažonas was arrested as an active priest who refused to obey the demand of the Soviet authorities to stop teaching pupils religious faith; during interrogations, he was incriminated with the "crimes" of publicising the wrongdoings of the Bolshevik regime in the persecution of religion in the USSR. When he was a prisoner in Kraslag, he was an example of fellow-feeling and self-sacrifice to others and never stopped performing his spiritual duties that were not tolerated in the camp. Such biographical facts doubtlessly point to martyrdom for faith and can serve as ana example to future generations