Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Karaganda (Agenzia Fides) – For over 50 years, the light of the faith was fought, in an attempt to silence it. For half a century, those Christians who were not afraid to testify to their faith in Christ have paid with their life. And the survivors have conserved a small flame that has not been extinguished, among these are many priests and religious who lived their ministry in hiding, administering the Sacraments, baptizing and marrying the couples. Today, in a land where the “Gulags” brought death, destruction, annihilation if human life and its inalienable dignity, a Cathedral will be dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima. This is what is occurring in Karaganda, in Kazakhstan, where a great Cathedral-Sanctuary is being built on the same site where many martyrs of the faith lost their lives. According to a statement from the local Church, it will be a place in honor of the victims of the persecution, thus marking the rebirth of the Catholic faith in a land that has suffered under atheist Communism for decades, and that now is coming out of the catacombs and is flowering, thanks to religious freedom.
In the Soviet era, Kazakhstan was infamous as a site for deportations. Whoever opposed the Communist regime was deported to the remote areas of central Asia to work on collectively-owned farms, or directly to work camps or coal mines, which are abundant in Kazakhstan. Given the need for manual labor, the regime planned the deportation of millions of people of different nationalities: and this was how Kazakhstan became “an immense concentration camp.” And among the deportees, there were thousands of Catholics, especially Poles, Ukrainians and Germans, as well as Lithuanians and Belarussians.
The city of Karaganda was the center of a network of camps called “Karlag” (“Karaganda lager”), one of the largest and most terrible of the Soviet concentration camps, which was the destination for victims of religious and political oppression. And here was where two Catholic centers for spirituality were begun, as many of the priests who were deported promoted the Church in hiding. Among these is the famous case of Fr. Alexij Saritski, beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001.
Today, Karaganda is a city of two and a half million people, with a large Mosque and an Orthodox Church. It will soon have a new Catholic Cathedral in order to celebrate the faith and recall the martyrs and deportees of over 120 ethnic origins.
The government of Kazakhstan granted the local Church permission in 2003, thanks to the healthy relations established between the Holy See and State authorities. The country was visited in 2001 by Pope John Paul II on one of his apostolic journeys. The Cathedral, whose construction is well underway, will be dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima, Mother of all Peoples.
The Church, with a gothic style and made of stone from the Caucuses, is being constructed thanks to the support and donations of the faithful all over the world. Thus, the Bishop of Karaganda, Bishop Pavel Lenga and his Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider are asking the faithful to make a special effort to finish the construction and be able to offer the Catholics of Kazakhstan a new Church, sign of the presence of Jesus and Mary in the Land of the Gulags. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 9/10/2008)
