DRAFT
Chelyabinsk, Siberia, Russia
Roman Catholic Parish
Parish Membership
© Copyright 1997 Sisters of St. Agnes, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin FEEFHS, all
rights reserved
First posted: 5 January 1997
Parish Membership
This parish covers an area larger than any of 95% of the world's Catholic dioceses.
Besides the main church in Chelyabinsk, the parish staff also services mission churches in
Shikhminka (112 miles/180 kilometers South), Barshuche (87 mi./140 km South), Korkino
(40 mi./64 km South), Kopeysk (15 mi./24 km South East), Slatoust (83 mi./ 134 km West),
and Kurgan (150 mi./ 241 km East). In Chelyabinsk, there are an estimated 5,000 to 6,000
people of Catholic ancestry. Most of them are still fearful of even making themselves known,
let alone publicly embracing the faith.
Among the earliest modern Catholic families in Chelyabinsk were Leo and Amelia Schmidt,
Johannes and Rosa Quint, Marguerita Wiesner, Karl and Maria Siebert, Alexander Matz
and his sons Alexander and Henry, Henry's wife Lena, Emma Dechant, Peter and Reshna
Bowman, Teresa Wildt, Eva Heier, Teresa Herman, Anna Miller, Josefina Herrspiegel,
Elvina Karlin, Helena Krug, and Ermina Schuster. Several single women lived with their
families as consecrated virgins. These included Paulina and Angelina Leiker (Amelia
Schmidt's aunts) and Maria Siebert (Karl's sister).
The younger Alexander Matz, the prayer and song leader, had also lived as a consecrated
virignity in the years before his imprisonment. (While in prison he promised a dying man
who was agonizing over a single daughter at home that, if he ever regained his freedom, he
would marry her. And when he was released from prison, he found the woman and married
her. Questioned about his earlier consecration, he replied, "Times are different now." He
moved to Karaganda, Kazakstan, and died soon afterward.)
Many of the German families who helped start the parish have moved to Germany during
the 1990s. Still the parish continues to grow, and over 30 were baptized or received into the
Church at Easter time of 1996 and another 25 on the Feast of Christ's Baptism in 1997.
Sunday Mass attendance at Chelyabinsk has been at about 110, at Shikhminka 60, Barshuche
60, Korkino 20-30, Kopeysk 20, Kurgan 12 and Slatoust 10.
The only known religious vocation from the parish is Sister Mirian (Dina) Kascianowska of
the Belarus province of the Sisters of Nazareth.
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