In memory of Rev. Jonas Staškevičius
Rev. Jonas Staškevičius and Stasys Staškevičius were brothers of the late Juozas Staškevičius (1909-2004) of Toronto and the late Bronius Staškevičius (1920-2003) of Montreal, the only two of the Staškevičius family who fled to the west to escape communism.Rev. Jonas Staškevičius (born in 1910) was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1935. When Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet communist forces during and after the War, he was persecuted for his priestly activities (for a time he was Spiritual Director in the only left open Seminary for Priests in Kaunas), in 1950 he was arrested, imprisoned, charged with ties to the underground and sent to the hard labour camps in Siberia where he died in 1955 at the age of 44. When Lithuania declared its independence in 1990, an expedition was organized to find his remains but the cemetery where he was burried had been demolished and nothing could be found. However the people of Lithuania remembered him as a saint and a martyr by erecting monuments in his honour in three different places: Žeimaičių kalvarija, Pakalniškiai and Pavarės. He was one of the 30,000 martyrs that were enumerated by pope John-Paul II as 20th century martyrs during the Jubilee festivities on May 7, 2000 in the Colosseum of Rome. Now the process for his beatification is being prepared.