Father Jaroslav Spodar, a Redemptorist, who serves both the Latin and the Greek-rite Catholics of Procop'yevsk and the surrounding area, entrusted the following open letter to the care of Vyacheslav Panichkin, who attended a leadership training course at the Free Congress Foundation's Krieble Institute in Washington DC, October 10 - November 28, 1993. By a marvelous prompting of Providence, a member of the Krieble staff, who had somehow heard of the Germans from Russia in Ellis County KS, gave Panichkin Fr. Blaine's address. Thus without his even knowing of the existence of this publication, Vyacheslav managed to put his pastor's letter on the desk of the American editor of his own bishop's newsletter.
Praised be Jesus Christ!
Dear brothers and sisters, Catholics of the West! We are happy to send you our best wishes and tell you about ourselves.
The Catholic Church is alive even here in Kuzbass, deep in Siberia. Several thousand of our parishoners (Germans, Western Ukrainians, Poles, Russians) suffered here with many other Russians under the brutal conditions of the humiliation and lawlessness that the atheistic Communist power unleashed against Christians.
Catholicism in our part of Siberia has a long history. Catholics first arrived here following the suppression of the Polish revolution of 1830. Many of them embraced the Orthodox church, and a cultural relic of their Catholicism was evident in the gothic architectural style of the Orthodox church built here in 1858. But G. Rogovin's Soviet forces burned it down in 1920.
Dozens of Polish families were moved to Kuznetsk also after the failure of the Polish revolution of 1863-64. They built small Catholic churches there, since none had existed there before that.
At the beginning of this century, peasants from the western part of the Russian Empire arrived in Siberia under Stolypin's reform. They built a major Catholic church in Mariinsk, but it also was destroyed after the October Revolution.
Finally a number of Ukrainians were transferred from Galicia [southeast Poland and southwest Ukraine] after the Second World War, and their descendents comprise the majority of our parishioners.
The Catholic community has been bringing together believers of Eastern and Western traditions and functioning as a parish since 1974, but it did so illegally. In 1983, we asked for recognition, but the Soviets rejected our request. For eight years then we functioned semi-legally, till our petition was finally granted in 1991.
Today the parish consists of more than 1,000 parishioners, with a central church in Procop'yevsk and subsidiary ones in Leninsk, Novokuznetsk, and Tashtagol. Our most urgent concern is the erection of a suitable church, since the house where we now meet is too small for the parishioners. We have bought a large plot of land in a very convenient place for our future church and invited architects from Germany. We hope to create a spiritual center for our great - in the future of course - Catholic community.
Hopefully our American brothers and sisters will be responsive to the faith of Catholics in Siberia.
The founder of our parish, Fr. Vassily Rudko, who died three years ago, was a professor of theology and a member of the Redemptorist order. Fr. Jaroslav Spodar, the present pastor, is the only Greek-Catholic priest in Siberia.
The problem of personnel is no less vital than that of erecting church buildings. Before long three new subsidiary churches will be registered, and the number of parishioners will grow to over 2,000. In a few years we expect practically all the nearly 50,000 ethnic Catholics to return to the Catholic Church.
Priests will not be able to organize a normal religious life by themselves. In a year, a Catholic Sunday school and public center will be opened. We sent two young parishioners to the seminary in L'vov, but this is obviously but a drop in the sea. The growing community of Kuzbass Catholics needs its own teachers, lawyers, economists, and specialists in other branches.
We ask you, therefore, to offer us your assistance in our efforts to bring the Catholic faith to a new birth in Siberia.
We moved into our CSA home on the Feast of the Annunciation.
The priests had a special welcome ceremony with live
branches having blossoms, leaves - signifying new life - bread,
salt, etc., and a special drink with meaningful toasts.
April 3, 1994
Our faith, language, and traditions are so similar and the lives and stories are so terribly, painfully different. Each of the older people has a story that is heartbreaking even now as they tell it - often for the first time and for me is inspirational as retreat time - or as making the Way of the Cross. I am writing the stories of the people of the parish and of horrors and faith here in Chelyabinsk in a Journal.
We as Sisters are very much wanted and loved. The people prayed for a priest all these years and were blessed when an occasional missionary risked his life to come, sometimes in the middle of the night - and now are overjoyed in having four priests from Germany who are like brothers to each other and to us, and two Sisters of St. Agnes from America! They can not believe that we would leave our beautiful country and life to come here. There is so much goodness and beauty here - in lives and in nature. Soon we will be going with the priests to outlying, German-speaking villages - growing into Church. The liturgies are touching. Much singing.
The German Catholics here are from the Ukraine and the Volga: Engels, Saratov, Katharinenstadt, Rohleder, Graf, Louis, Schoenchen, Pfeifer, Munjor. Names that have surfaced are Wasinger, Leiker, Kuhn, Ruder, Ladigan, Weigel, Waldschmidt. Some are not baptized and are just beginning to come to church, a nice little church built since 1981 - over the years in pain and sweat and persecution. Each one saved materials, scraped, laid stones from labor camp barracks, designed, woodcarved, painted pictures, each contributing their gifts.
Daily morning Mass is at 9:30 in German and in Russian on
Sundays at 11 and several times a week in Russian. The little
church is filled with older and old people for the German Mass and
young, fervent Russian youth (ages 14-30s) - the hope of the
Church and world in Russia.
April 16, 1994
The four Focolare priests - Father Wilhelm Palesch and Father Lucian
Gehrmann from the Erfurt diocese, Reinhard Franitza from the Hildesheim diocese, and Peter
Danisch of the Magdeburg diocese - are building up the church with the small Immaculate
Conception parish as a center of an area of about 300 kilometers. A new
church is being built. It may take four years to complete it because
finances are very limited.
April 17, 1994
We will be in Moscow May 31 to June 3 to meet Sister Mary Elise
Leiker and bring her to Chelyabinsk. We are very happy here. Spring
is very slow in coming. When it rains, it gets cold, below freezing.
We are getting our home papered, painted, electrically rewired for
our computer e-mail, and waiting for our telephone. All the people
we meet are very nice. Those in our church are like a family. When
they work for us, we pay them. They are not destitute but really
poor. All work now full spare time in gardens to provide for winter.
May 20, 1994
Second of a series of excerpts from an account of a visit with
Bishop Joseph Werth in Novosibirsk in January and February of this
year. Father Bitz can be reached at P.O. Box 9, Wimbledon ND 58492
or INTERNET: bitz@acc.jc.edu or (701)
435-2310.
Two of the ladies [at Immaculate Conception Church in Novosibirsk] were Zerrs, so I told them about the German-Russian Bishop Anthony Zerr. They had never heard of him. Another lady was a Kessler, the family name of another former Bishop of the German Russians. She didn't know that either. It is at this Franciscan house that Dan McNeil from Minnesota lives. He works at the Caritas (Catholic Social Services) office.
Fr. Joseph Messmer told me about his older brother Fr.Jerome, who is in the Caucasus, where there is a war going on. He said his brother is constantly afraid they will come to kill him. As a result his hair has gotten completely grey in his young age.
Fr. Joseph, the Bishop, and I went to visit Mother Teresa's Sisters. They have a log house in the older part of town. The Sisters go to the train station where the homeless gather to bring them food and support. They want to buy a building in order to care for the homeless, but the government will not allow them to. So the homeless, many of whom have lost their jobs in the transition to a market economy, go to the station where it is warm. However, the police do not want them there. They beat and injure many of the homeless, breaking legs, arms, bodies. Many of them die from it. This is a great source of pain to the Church of Novosibirsk.
While I was there, the lowest temperature at night was -2° F. and in the daytime 20-30°. It looks a lot like Northern Minnesota with lots of pine and birch trees, and they have about the same amount of snow.
I also celebrated Eucharist with the Sisters of St. Elizabeth of Hungary - one German and two Polish - who will staff the orphanage being built. They go to the train station three days a week to feed the homeless.
We also visited the Blessed Sacrament Sisters, who are perceived as the "native Sisters." Two of Bishop Werth's sisters belong to this order, and I was fortunate to meet one of them who now teaches at a Catholic school in Tomsk. They are known as the poorest of the religious orders here. Their motherhouse is in Marx.
Bishop Werth reflected on ministry and priorities. Many
think it is most important to work with the young. "That is true,"
he said, "but it is not the whole truth. First we must work with the
adults who have a foundation in faith, and with them form a
community of faith. Then we bring in the young; and they have
the foundation, the support of a community as they walk in
faith." He said in Marx he worked with the elderly first, those
who had an experience of faith. Then the young people came to
this community of faith which supports the new-found faith.
Now in Marx (six years later), they have more young people than
old - but they had to have the foundation of the older people in
the Church. The Bishop said that in another town the priest
worked very hard with the young people first. Many of them
came, and quite a few even went to the convent. But after a while
they left the convent and don't even go to church at all. They are
like the wind - they blow strong, but have no foundation, no
community of faith to undergird and support them in the new
experience of faith.
In late March there were four young men in the minor seminary at Novosibirsk: Vyacheslav Koklov, 18; Vitaly Orlovski, 20; Victor Schneider, 20, from Karasuk, whose mother and grandmother migrated to Germany in February; and Osep, 21, from an Armenian town in Georgia, who had been studying in Tomsk.
Among those who recently took up work in Novosibirsk are two Americans: Father Mike Desjardins, S.J. (Maryland Prov.), former missionary in Chile, and Father Blase Karas, O.F.M. (Pulaski Prov.), who in recent years was working with drug addicts in Chicago.
Leo John Ullman, Bishop Werth's 17-year-old nephew from Germany, will be the house guest of LeRoy and Chris Werth of Schoenchen KS July 27 to Aug. 16. Leo's parents and the Bishop's parents all live very close to Chris Werth's hometown in the environs of Frankfort.
In February, the Bishop presided at the wedding in Germany of his youngest brother. The only other family wedding he had ever attended was that of Leo's parents 20 years ago.
Von der lust, katholisch zu sein, published in Aachen in 1993 contains a long autobiographical chapter on Bp. Werth's youth. The German book costs US$35.00 from Schoenhofs, Cambridge MA (617) 547-8855.
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