Soon after the last issue was published, readers of the Print edition
of a letter from SIBERIA received a more personal letter
directly from Siberia.
In April Bishop Werth wrote directly to all those on our mailing list asking
help in completing the children's home being built at Novosibirsk. Sr.
Thomasine Bugala, O.P., from Grand Rapids MI was visiting there at the time
and helped him with the English text and all the clerical work involved with
this mailing to 900 U.S. addresses.
The bishop sent a description and photos of the buildings and invited his
American friends to help bring it to completion before September. Thanks to
their generosity, he has already received over $40,000 towards the project
and the first two buildings are finished and blessed.
Print edition readers already have a copy of the letter and description, but
they will be posted in an appendix to the Internet edition of this issue and
can be printed by anyone having access to the World-Wide Web. We are happy,
however to publish here a note of thanks just received from His Excellency.
5 September 1996
Dear friends,
I have travelled all summer, and as I return now to Novosibirsk, I learn that the letter we sent in the Spring has inspired many contributions from the readers of a letter from SIBERIA. I wish I could thank all of you personally. Later I hope at least to write a report for you. It should give you much joy to know that through your contributions you have helped many poor children.
We blessed the Children's Home Aug. 26 and expect the first children to arrive in October.
With heartfelt greetings and blessings,
+Joseph Werth
According to Fr. Al Bitz of Casselton ND, Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky of Berlin, who provided the lion's share of the funds for the children's home, was in Novosibirsk at the time of the blessing, and Novosibirsk television referred to the home as the finest in all of Russia.
Bishop Werth joined an American tour group of Germans from Russia during its June visit to ancestral villages in the southern Ukraine. This enabled him to visit Speier, the town from which his mother was deported as a young child about 1931, and Selz, where his fellow German-Russian bishop Anton Zerr (d. 1932) is buried. He then accompanied the group to Germany for a meeting in Stuttgart of Germans from Russia and then spent the rest of June and July making mission appeals in Germany and Slovakia. He returned to Novosibirsk Aug. 3.
When he visited the Altai region in August of 1995, Bishop Werth blessed churches at Halbstadt and Tal'menka and said Mass in the brick shell of the church being erected at Slavgorad near the Kazakstan border. This August, he returned to Slavgorad to bless the completed building. He was accompanied by Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky of Berlin, who had helped pay for the new church.
This casual announcement did not do the story justice, as the electronic version has already reached a much larger audience than the printed version could ever hope.
John manages the huge website of the Federation of East European Family History Societies, headquartered in Salt Lake City. Fr. Blaine called John in February to ask how one might go about starting a webpage for the Church in Asian Russia. Presto! Three days later John e-mailed word that the homepage was ready and that he had already recruited Larry to scan in all the back issues and format them.
Besides the homepage with general information and the back issues, the site contains also a large map of the Catholic Church in Asian Russia, a biography of Bishop Joseph Werth and a series of letters from Sr. Lucy about the arson and Easter miracle at Chelyabinsk
The Internet edition contains none of the photos in the Print edition, but it does contain documents not found there.
Many search engines can now access the site to anyone in the world who types in the search words Catholic and Siberia. In a single 10-day period in April, 4,348 people accessed our site - most of them from the U.S. - but also from United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Netherlands, Finland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Korea, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Lithuania, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Vatican, Japan, Singapore, Norway, Austria, Thailand, Estonia, Hungary, South Africa, Romania, Israel, Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Taiwan, Poland, Chile, Portugal and Hong Kong.
Indeed your editor sat agape as he opened a page on Siberia - located in the vast Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library at the National University of Australia in Canberra - and found a letter from SIBERIA listed among four electronic serials on Siberia.
In addition to our own website, we are pleased to call attention to three
others related to Bishop Werth's "diocese," one maintained by Jeff
Lang of Eugene OR, promoting the cause of the Catholic parish at Vladivostok
on the eastern end of the Apostolic Administration of Asian Russia
http://www.pond.net/~jeffclang/mostholy/index.html
one written by Fr. Ignatius Pawlus, S.D.B., pastor at Irkutsk near Lake
Baikal, who describes his parish as "three times larger than my home
country of Poland."
http://www.sds.org/pawlus.htm
and one maintained by the Salesian Missions, which tells of their men who
live in Yakutsk and Aldan, two of the coldest towns in the world.
http://www.salesianmissions.org/AroundTheWorld/Europe/Russia/Russia.html
[ The home page for Salesian Missions Online is http://www.salesianmissions.org ]
All five of the Agnesian Sisters are once again in Chelyabinsk and their convent is rather crowded. The sisters purchased part of a lower floor of a new high-rise apartment complex just two blocks from the new church and have been hoping to move in "any day now" for the past seven months, but a huge crane on the roof needs to be removed first.
During Holy Week, the wooden chapel on Domennaya St. was set afire by two lads from the parish community who were trying to cover up their theft from the church of the liturgical vessels.
The interior was so badly marred that Holy Week services had to be moved to a hall made available by one of the German-Russian builders of the new church.
This was providential. Three times as many people showed up for the Holy Week services at the hall as would fit in the chapel. The German and Russian people of the parish began working more closely with one another. And the whole parish experienced a remarkable reconciliation process, when people of the parish forgave the arsonists and asked the judge to allow the parish to work at rehabilitating the culprits rather than punishing them.
Sr. Lucy Wasinger's series of moving letters concerning this resurrection story went rapidly round the world by e-mail (and are still accessible at our website), and within days sufficient funds were available to restore the little chapel for use during the remainder of the building of the new church on Prokatnaya St.
When the Lithuanian Immaculate Conception Sisters were civilly suppressed in 1948 and their main convent razed, the community survived, united only by their religious vows and infrequent contacts with their superior. Some came to a filial foundation at Putnam CT, others stayed with their families, and some lived alone in apartments. However, Sr. Josefina Laurinaviciute (professed 1938) went into Siberia as an underground missionary - the first known Sister in Siberia and the only one until the 1980's when the Blessed Sacrament Sisters arrived.
Sister was known to the faithful of the underground church as an ingenious religious and pastoral servant who gathered, supported and prayed with Ukrainian and German-Russian believers, and also witnessed persecutions and martyrdoms. For nearly three decades she worked alone, but about 1975 she moved to Prokop'yevsk to assist Fr. Vasily Rudko, a Ukrainian Redemptorist priest in Prokop'yevsk whose health was badly broken by various Communist persecutions.
When Vasily was able to offer Mass in the dark of the night, Josefina carried the Eucharist by autobus and train to distant believers. She ministered to the sick and assisted in burying the dead. She was with Vasily when he died in 1990 and today lives alone in a Novokuznetsk where Fr. Jaroslav Spodar, C.SS.R., the new Prokop'yevsk pastor, comes for Sunday Mass; and she daily has Communion services and ministers pastorally to the faith community.
A city of over a million people, Vladivostok has only one electroencephalograph, an apparatus for detecting and recording brain waves. The city's medical community asked Fr. Myron Effing, the Catholic pastor there, to help them find another EEG. Myron's e-mail all-points bulletin was handed on to the Hays (Kansas) Medical Center which found two such machines in its storage, both broken. With parts from the one, the other was made whole; and both the working machine and the parts supply are on their way to Vladivostok. At last word they were in a 40-foot shipping container being filled in California with all sorts of religious and humanitarian supplies for Vladivostok. The filled container will cost $7,500 to ship.
Twelve Catholics from the diocese of Yokohama, Japan, including two priests and a Sister, joined the evangelization team of the Vladivostok parish in running its second children's summer camp Aug. 11-18 on Popov island, a two-hour ferry ride from Vladivostok. Thirty to 40 children aged 8-16, not just from the main parish but also from its six mission parishes, were expected to attend activities including prayer and catechesis, sports, games, hikes, skits, competitions, and swimming in the ocean.
The cathedral parish at Novosibirsk is now using the lower part of the new cathedral for its liturgical celebrations, and the superstructure is nearly finished. Bishop Werth has informed various people that he plans to bless the cathedral on Aug. 10, 1997. A number of the Bishop's American friends have been talking for years about possibly attending the dedication.
Donations to the Catholic Church in Asian Russia should be sent to the Bishop Werth Fund, Capuchin Mission Office, P.O. Box 4575, Denver CO 80204. It is not safe to send funds directly to Russia via the mail, and checks can not be cashed there.
Novosibirsk, 04.03.96
Russia, 630132 Novosibirsk, ul. Narimskaya 19-163
Kuriya Apostol'skoi Administratury aziatskoi chasti Rossii
[Addressee identification]
Greetings and wishes for a Blessed and a Happy Easter!
Here in Novosibirsk, Siberia, there is a great need for a home for children who lack the loving care that is so necesssary for them. The Sisters of the Congregation of St. Elizabeth are most willing to provide this care for these children. Work on an orphanage has already begun, but our finances have not allowed us to complete this essential work.
So I am returning to you, my friends in America, to ask you to help your brothers and sisters in Siberia. We will greatly appreciate any assistance you can give us in order to bring this work to completion in time for the children to start the 1996-1997 school year in a new home.
Please send your generous offering to
Bishop Werth's Orphanage Fund
Capuchin Mission Office
P.O. Box 4575
Denver CO 80204
May the Risen Lord bless you for your continued generosity.
Sincerely yours in Christ
[signature]
Bishop Joseph Werth, S.J.
Apostolic Administrator of Asian Russia
P.S. A detailed description and picture of the orphanage are enclosed. The Sisters are waiting patiently for your assistance so they can help the children in need of their care.
"Beauty will save the world!" This saying of Fyodor Dostoyevsky directly applies to the orphanage for children and teenagers being built by Caritas Novosibirsk, our Catholic charities organization, at a picturesque place near Bugrinskaya Roshcha Park in Novosibirsk.
The civil administration of the Kirovsky district very appropriately set aside land for the orphanage on a high bank of the Ob River, and V. Borodkin, an Russian architect emeritus, used the landscape well and placed the children's home and their service building close to the river and staff quarters a bit higher.
Bishop Joseph Werth, apostolic administrator for the Catholics of the Latin rite in the Asian part of Russia, laid the cornerstone June 18, 1994. His blessing is visibly present in the very appearance of the orphanage buildings.
The children's home is a beautiful, three-story red-brick building with a graceful shape. On its front is a relief of a cross. The shape of the cross is also prominent in the modern white plastic window frames atop the children's home. The interior of the home is solemn and magnificent due to a high dome which gives much light and space to the first floor. Near the entrance, two flights of stairs lead to the third floor landing, which is graced by a beautiful railing. A stained glass window with a biblical scene adorns the staircase.
In all, the interior of the building combines artistic beauty with comfort for the children. The bedrooms, each built for two persons, are situated around the perimeter of the second and third floors. Opposite the bedrooms are bathrooms and toilets. Every four bedrooms are connected with a hall, in the center of which is a small kitchen so the children can experience a homelike feeling. On the ground floor are study rooms and playrooms. One has a beautiful panoramic view from the windows of this building of the Ob River and Bugrinskaya Roscha Park.
The children's home is connected with the service building by a warm passageway, which is necessary for the cold Siberian climate. In the service building are the dining room, kitchen, vegetable storage, service rooms, laundry and ironing room. The walls and floor of the service building are beautifully tiled.
A house is being built in front of the service building with space for a convent for the Sisters who will take care of the children, rooms for temporary residence for the orphanage graduates and visitors, and Caritas Novosibirsk's office, with conference rooms for parish, diocesan and other meetings as well as for the training of volunteers.
The Church was able to begin construction of the orphanage for children and teenagers due to the financial support of several international organizations, first and foremost Caritas Germany, as well as private donations of parishioners and other individuals. The Novosibirsk Foreign Trade Bank and Olovokombinat, a tin producing factory in Novosibirsk, also contributed.
However, additional financial help is needed in order to complete construction of this important social work so that the children can start the 1996 school year in their new home.
We ask all the organizations and individuals which are interested in generously helping this project to send their donations for the Novosibirsk Orphanage to the following address:
Bishop Werth's Orphanage Fund
Capuchin Mission Office
P.O. Box 4575
Denver CO 80204
May the Risen Lord bless you for your generous offering.
a letter from SIBERIA is now accessible worldwide via
the World-Wide Web The HTML (web) version of this issue is posted at
http://feefhs.org/lfs/lfs-20.html
( http://feefhs.org/lfs/frg-lfs.html ) thanks to
the efforts of John D. Movius of Davis CA and Larry R. Jensen of Ithaca NY.
| [ a letter from SIBERIA Home Page ] | [ Index ] | [ Previous Issue ] | [ Next Issue ] |