EUROPE/RUSSIA - Sign of the Risen Lord and home for all: 25 years since the reopening of the Catholic Cathedral in Moscow

by Chiara Dommarco

Moscow (Agenzia Fides) - On Wednesday evening, December 11, the Catholic Church in Moscow celebrated the 25th anniversary of the reopening of the current Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. "In these years we have shown that this church is a sign of the Risen Lord and a home for all," said the Archbishop Emeritus of Minsk-Mahilee, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, at the beginning of the solemn Mass that he presided over. The anniversary celebration, which was also attended by diplomats and representatives of the city administration and the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as several Catholic bishops and priests, continued with the opening of a photo exhibition on the cathedral and an organ concert.
Archbishop Kondrusiewicz played a key role in the events of 25 years ago: in 1991 he was appointed Apostolic Administrator of Moscow by John Paul II and, together with the Presidential Office of the Russian Federation and the capital's administration, took the necessary steps to return the church to local Catholics. Today, the cathedral, the episcopal seat of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of the Mother of God in Moscow, is also an integral part of the cultural life of the Russian capital, both at the city and federal level, especially because of the rich concert program that takes place in the church throughout the year. Its history, closely linked to the Polish Catholic community abroad, is "rich and tragic at the same time," as Kondrusiewicz stressed.
Polish Catholics, who were mainly employed in the construction of the city's railway lines, approached the city authorities in 1894 with a request to build a new church, as the other two Catholic churches in Moscow were insufficient to meet the parish's pastoral needs. The project was approved and in 1899 construction began on the neo-Gothic style church. Built entirely with donations from local and foreign Catholics, it was consecrated on December 8 (December 21 in the Gregorian calendar), 1911, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, to which it was dedicated. In 1919, it became an independent parish. In August 1937, as part of the great Stalinist purges, the parish priest Michał Cakul was shot. Eleven months later, the church was officially closed and many parishioners were persecuted. The defaced and looted building was badly damaged during World War II. The authorities subsequently remodeled the interior, which first became dormitories for workers and students of technical institutes, then a food warehouse, and finally the headquarters of a company.
At the end of the 1980s, the Polish expatriate community asked for the church to be reopened, and on December 8, 1990, after more than 50 years, a mass was celebrated in the churchyard in front of the entrance steps. On April 13, 1991, with the bull "Providi quae Decessores" by John Paul II, the Apostolic Administrations of European Russia and Asian Russia were established and Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz was appointed Apostolic Administrator of Moscow. He initiated the re-establishment of the parish of the Immaculate Conception: for five years, liturgical celebrations, confessions, catechisms, and meetings with young people took place in the churchyard. In 1996, the building was made available to the Catholic community again at the request of the Archbishop to the then Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
On December 12, 1999, the then Secretary of State in the Vatican, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, inaugurated the renovated cathedral.
"May the Zacchaeus of today," concluded Archbishop Kondrusiewicz, alluding to the Gospel of the encounter between the tax collector Zacchaeus and the Son of God, "seek and find Jesus here, and may he perform the miracle of spiritual healing."
(Agenzia Fides, 12/12/2024)

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