1 Rouble Christianity (In The Roman Catholic Religion)

Part of Belarus's expansive "religions of the world" commemorative program launched in the late 1990s, this issue addresses Roman Catholicism's particular significance in western Belarus — a region historically part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth where Catholic communities survived Soviet-era suppression in ways the Orthodox church did not. The National Bank issued parallel pieces for Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism simultaneously, an unusual gesture of official pluralism from a state that had spent decades suppressing all four.

Copper-nickel was the workhorse of this entire commemorative series. None of these pieces were intended for circulation.