Three Sisters of St. Agnes missioned in Chelyabinsk since last February will leave there Feb. 14 for a month in the United States, during which they will renew their visas and visit friends and supporters in various areas.
Sisters Lucy Ann Wasinger, Mary Ann Schippers and Mary Elise Leiker expect to be in Moscow Feb. 15, in Fond du Lac WI (via Chicago) on Feb. 16, and in Hays KS on Feb. 20 or 21.
The Volga-German Society of Ellis and Rush Counties will sponsor a public reception for the Sisters in the cafeteria at Kennedy Middle School at Hays on Saturday afternoon Feb. 25.
After that, Sister Lucy Ann Wasinger plans to visit three parishes in and near Alva, Oklahoma, who have adopted Chelyabinsk as a Sister Parish.
The sisters will all return to Fond du Lac about Mar. 8 and leave for Russia again on March 20. On the return journey they expect to be joined by Sister Deborah Golias, who is currently participating in a mission discernment process in San Antonio.
In an article in the Jan. 8, 1995, Our Sunday Visitor, Felix Corley speaks of problems of establishing "an authentically Russian Catholic Church," and quotes at length Fathers Yevgeni Genrikhs and Alexander Khlmelnitsky's complaints that the emerging church in Russia is being influenced too much by the foreign missionaries working there. It admits these workers provide essential pastoral services, but grumbles "their Russian is not real Russian."
Some years from now, such an article would have to be taken seriously. For now, however, it seems ludicrous and indeed downright ungrateful to complain about the priests, brothers and sisters and lay missionaries, who, at great personal sacrifices, have assembled from all over the world at the request of the Russian bishops to assist local churches which were nearly void of priests and religious.
Fathers Genrikhs and Khmelnitsky - according to the article itself - are the only two Catholic priests of Russian origin in the Moscow "diocese." By the article's criteria, there are none in the Novosibirsk "diocese." So two for all of Russia!
Even Bishop Joseph Werth of Novosibirsk is discounted by the article as "of non-Russian descent from elsewhere in the Soviet Union." The truth of the matter is, Bishop Werth is a Russian citizen, speaks Russian as his first language, and was one of the framers of the Russian constitution. To say he was born in a non-Russian part of the former Soviet Union is beside the point. His father and paternal ancestors lived in Russia for nearly two centuries till Stalin deported the family to Kazakhstan.
Dec. 20: We are again being evicted from our rented hall which is on the fourth floor. We have had no heat and I am surprised that our people still came. We finally got a couple of huge water heaters for the church and it is much warmer, not really comfortable, but you can stand it.
I had suggested remodeling the apartment that I lived in earlier, but the Archbishop was against it... Now we have no choice. It will be our last move because we own the apartment and will not be evicted. Nor can the rent raise so high that we can not afford it. I can feel with Mary and Joseph. They too had a problem finding a place to rest. They too had to move around.
(Fr. Michael Shields celebrated his first Christinas in Magadan, thus allowing Fr. Austin to spend Christmas and January in the States. Fr. Austin flew to Anchorage Dec. 22 and was joined there Dec. 29 by Kyrill, 11, and Maria, 14, both Magadaners, who flew on with him to Denver, where they will spend the next three months perfecting their English and experiencing life in a strong Catholic family setting in St. Thomas More Parish in Englewood. Kyrill is the boy apostle Janez Sever wrote about in our second issue (31 Mar. 1993) as an example of children leading their parents and families into the Church.)
Dec 14: I'm looking forward to celebrating my first Christmas in Russia, a gorgeous, snowy Winter Wonderland. While our small parish community celebrates Christmas on December 25, the rest of Chelyabinsk will be going about their daily business and lives as usual. Dec. 25 is just another ordinary day. The people who belong to the Russian Orthodox Church had an Advent preparation for Christmas like we do in our Church, but they celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7. I feel I have lots to learn about Russian Orthodox spirituality and religious ritual. It's very much a party of Russian culture.
My Christmas weekend celebration will be with the people in our three outlying mission parishes. I know it will be a unique experience to pray and celebrate Mass in a small room of a building and in one mission place in a family home. I'm used to attending Christmas Mass in huge churches with gorgeous Christmas decorations. Here Christmas is celebrated in a humble abode with a picture of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, not a crib with statues.
In our ministry of presence new doors continue to open for us. A new door has opened for me last week. Our pastor, Fr. Wilhelm Palesch, invited a lay woman minister from our parish and me to accompany him to a medical education complex. About 350 children with birth defects live there, are educated and treated medically there. Like the children that we visit weekly at the hospital, these children are victims of nuclear radiation fallout polluting our region of Siberia.
As with the children at the hospital when I saw these children for the first time, I began to understand why God has called me to mission in Chelyabinsk. Visiting these children is a source of deep joy for me.
It is imperative that I learn Russian. My speaking skills are still very inadequate. In speaking with the children, a lay woman parishioner interprets for me. She speaks English, German and Russian. We minister as a team: Fr. Wilhelm, Elsa, the laywoman, and I. The wonderful thing about our ministry with the children is that they look forward to our coming. They are eager to learn about Jesus.
Dec. 15: Winter mild so far. Temperature has been around O° to -5° C. (20°s F.) till today (Dec. 15) when it is -22° C, (-6° F.). Light snow daily. Total so far four to five inches.
Fr. Daniel Maurer, C.J.D. (daniel@catholic.marine.su), associate pastor at Vladivostok, has an artilce on the Novosibirsk Apostolic Administration's use of e-mail in the January 1995 issue of Catholic World Report.
Valerie Walatka, lay missionary from the Archdiocese of Anchorage, is now working with Fathers Myron Effing and Maurer in Vladivostok.
Fourth of a series of excerpts from an account of a visit with
Bp. Joseph Werth in Novosibirsk in January and February of
1994. Fr. Bitz can be reached at P.O. Box 9, Wimbledon ND 58492
or INTERNET:
bitz@acc.jc.edu or (701) 435-2310.
After Sunday Eucharist in Barnaul, we drove about 120 km to the small town of Pulchinsky (Tal'menka). The faith community there had gathered at people's houses for quite a few years. Last year they bought a log house from one of the German-Russian families that emigrated to Germany. They took out a wall so that one half of the house is now the Church. The other half is the sacristy, kitchen, and a place for the priest to stay.
They are served by a young priest from Germany who speaks no Russian, which is a concern for the future of the parish. All the German-Russians hope to be in Germany within two years. If the priest is unable to speak Russian, he will most likely not be able to attract Russians to the Roman Catholic Church. Then when the German-Russians (this town includes both Volga and Odessa German-Russians) are all gone, the parish would have to close. It is here that the people were saying that they still are a people without a home - the Russians still discriminate against them, and on the radio every day they hear the message that Germany doesn't want them either.
I concelebrated the Sunday Eucharist with them at 3 p.m. Afterwards we had a great conversation with the people. I asked them to sing some hymns with me. They replied that the real lead singers had already moved to Germany. However, one lady had copied the words of hymns as she remembered them into a small spiral notebook. She led us in the hymn singing. I asked them to sing the "Farewell" hymn sung at funerals. I expected that they might not do that. (The people in Santa Cecilia, Argentina, had refused to sing that when I visited the German-Russians there because, as they said, "It carries too many memories and is sung only at funerals.") I then told them about all the German-Russians who had scattered to Canada, the U.S. and South America and that these people never forgot the German-Russians who were still someplace in Russia. I told them about some of the faith-filled people and martyrs in their history.
The men generally sat on the right side and the women on the left. One of the men was talking about their terrible suffering over the years because of Stalin. The more he talked, the more upset he became. Finally, one of the ladies said, "That is why we have to pray for Stalin - because he did all those terrible things to us and our people." Wow! This is living the demands of faith and experiencing it in the marrow of one's bones. They have not forsaken their faith tradition.
When I told the Bishop about this experience, he told me about an event between his father and a friend, who were talking about the many hardships and sufferings because of Stalin. The friend said that Stalin is one man that he will never be able to forgive. The Bishop's father replied, "You have to forgive him, or you will never be able to pray the Lord's prayer." The friend paused for a while, and with a groaning voice said, "I guess I will never again be able to pray the Our Father!" These people have experienced and are experiencing compassion and forgiveness as an essential part of their faith community. Afterward we had dinner with Alexander and Regina Meier, who had been lay leaders of that faith community for years. They, along with their daughter and family, hope to emigrate to Germany as soon as possible.
There are still about one million German-Russians in the
Commonwealth of Independent States (the former Soviet Union).
They still suffer greatly. The struggling, new Church still needs
much support, encouragement, and development. It will be a
challenge not only for Bishop Werth, but for all German-Russians
scattered to all corners of the world. Not only is Bp.
Werth making a difference in Siberia, but together we can all
help make a big impact for good, for faith, for hope amidst the
German-Russians who experience all too deeply the scriptural
admonition that "we have no lasting citv here on this Earth."
The fall semester for the major seminary in Moscow began with 20 seminarians housed in portable huts around the reoccupied ruins of Immaculate Conception Church. A new seminary will be opened 25 miles from Moscow in a training center (once meant for communist officials) purchased by Aid to the Church in Need.
Irish-born Phillip Andrews, who has worked in Russia since 1992, was ordained a deacon for the Apostolic Administration of Moscow on Nov. 30. Andrews is the first person ordained for service in that Apostolic Administration.
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