Bishop Joseph Werth, of the Society of Jesus (S.J.), serves the worldwide Catholic Church's largest ecclesiastical circumscription. It encompasses 4.2 million square miles (10.3 per cent of all the land on earth) and extends through nine of the world's twenty four time zones.
His charge is to care for all of the Catholics scattered throughout Siberia and the Russian Far East and to help the church there arise from ashes. His flock are predominantly German, Polish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian peoples, most of whom have been scattered all over Asian Russia by Stalin and other earlier despots.
Named titular bishop of Bulna and Latin-rite Apostolic Administrator of Siberia by Pope John Paul II on April 13, 1991, Werth had at that time two Ukrainian-born priests to help him find and minister to an estimated million and a half Catholics. Since then he has assembled a cosmopolitan team of over a hundred priests, sisters, brothers and lay missionaries from 18 different countries -- especially Poland, Germany, and Slovakia -- but including also Nicaragua, Lebanon, India, Argentina, South Korea, and many other European countries. At least 14 are from the United States.
Centering his apostolic administration at Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia -- where he is currently building a cathedral and chancery -- Bishop Werth has stationed smaller teams of church workers in many of the largest cities of Siberia and the Far East as well as in a few small towns with sizeable Catholic populations. His parishes at Chelyabinsk and Sverdlosk in the west and those at Vladivostok and Magadan in the east are more than 3,000 miles apart.
Born in Karaganda, Kazakstan, on Oct. 4, 1952, Joseph Werth was the second oldest of 11 children born to Johannes Werth (born Oct. 1, 1923, in Schoenchen, Russia (on the Volga), who died Nov. 18, 1995, at Ilbenstadt (near Frankfurt, Germany) and his wife, Maria Hoerner Werth (born Dec. 23, 1931 at Speier, near Odessa, in the Ukraine).
Joseph began studies for the priesthood clandestinely in Lithuania under the direction of a leader of the underground Jesuits, who also secretly accepted him into the Lithuanian Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Later he was able to complete his studies at the major seminary of Kaunas. In 1984 Joseph became the first Catholic priest ordained since the 1930s in the Asian part of the former Soviet Union.
Prior to his being named a bishop, he pursued pastoral work at Aktyubinsk, Kazakstan, from 1984 till 1988, and at Marx in Russia's Saratov oblast from 1988 till 1991. He was so successful at Aktyubinsk, especially with the youth, that the local communist officials expelled him from the city in 1988.
He then moved to Marx along the Volga, where two of his sisters (both members of the Blessed Sacrament Sisters) had already organized about 30 Catholic congregations among the thousands of ethnic Germans who, following the death of Stalin, had returned to the area of the former Volga German Republic. In 1993 he had the distinction of being appointed by President Boris Yeltsin to help write the new Russian constitution.
The Bishop's paternal grandfather was Joseph Werth, born. Dec. 15, 1871, Schoenchen, Russia; deported as a kulak to Kazakstan in 1929 (with his wife and children); died Nov. 25, 1951. The Bishop's paternal grandmother was Paulina Demund, born 1881 in Schoenchen; deported 1929; died Dec. 7, 1933. The Bishop's maternal grandfather was Dominic Hoerner, b. in Speier, Ukraine; deported about 1931 to Kazakstan.
The parents of Joseph Werth (1871-1951) were Peter (b. ca 1830) and Margaretha Werth. Joseph and Paulina Werth (and their son Johannes) were part of a trainload of 30,000 ethnics Germans gathered up during the collectivization and dumped in the middle of the Kazakstan steppe in the middle of winter of 1929. Those that survived did so by digging holes in the earth. By the time the next load arrived, 12,000 had died. This area is now the city of Karaganda.
Bishop Werth is fluent in Russian, German, Lithuanian, Latin and speaks some Italian. He is not able to speak or to write in English.
NDSU Booklet Interview of Bishop Werth: A booklet was published in June 1996 by the North Dakota State University titled "The Church and the Russian-Germans in the Siberian Homeland Today", based on a 1995 interview with Bishop Werth. Please see the NDSU Publications Page for details.
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