Aid to the Church in Need: Tartarsan: A gift to Catholics in Russia

Tartarsan: A gift to Catholics in Russia

Posted by Press release on 29/8/2008, 6:06 pm
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Tartarsan: A gift to Catholics in Russia

ACN News, Thursday, 28th August 2008 – RUSSIA

A gift to Catholics in Russia
Historic moment as Catholic church re-opens with State help

CELEBRATIONS are being held to mark the opening of the first Catholic church in Russia to be rebuilt with government help – a break-through taking place 90 years after it was seized during the Bolshevik Revolution.
The church in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan republic, will be consecrated today (Friday) (29th August), to replace the original which was confiscated following the 1917 October Revolution.
According to the reports received by Aid to the Church in Need, the charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, the building – nearly 500 miles east of Moscow – was put to secular use during the Soviet era, and it is impossible to return it to the Catholic authorities.
Instead, the government in Tatarstan, an autonomous region, agreed to fund a new church built on a different site but constructed according to the original design.

The new church is built to the same design as the one seized by Bolsheviks in 1918

The interior furnishing of the church and its parish centre was funded by ACN.
The consecration of the new church tomorrow will be attended by the Vatican’s former secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.
According to reports received by ACN, an overjoyed faithful have attributed the new church to the prayers of Our Lady of Kazan, an icon of which was returned to Russia by Pope John Paul II.
The parish priest, Father Diogenes Urkiza, told Aid to the Church in Need that this was a “unique instance of restorative justice” and a “miracle”.
The priest and his faithful note that the government’s decision to rebuild the church in 2004 came in the same year that the former Pope gave the icon back to Russia.
Our Lady of Kazan, or in Russian “Kazanskaya”, is the most revered icon in Russia, and is considered to be miraculous by both Orthodox and Catholics.
The icon was entrusted to the care of John Paul II during the final years of the Soviet era and was returned to Russia by Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Unity among Christians.

The cross is put in the place on top of Kazan’s new Church

Peter Humeniuk, ACN’s Russia specialist, who visited Kazan last year and maintains close contacts with both Catholic and Orthodox there, described the rebuilding of the new church as “a concrete sign of goodwill on the side both of the government and the Orthodox Church”.
He described the project as an “encouraging proof of a mutual rapprochement” and a “beautiful gesture, in some sense a response to the return of the revered icon”.
The rebuilding of the Catholic church in Kazan was also welcomed by Orthodox Archbishop Anastasy of Kazan and Tatarstan, who discussed the project with Cardinal Walter Kasper during the Cardinal’s unofficial visit to the city earlier this year.
The Catholic parish in Kazan numbers around 500 faithful. The majority of the population are Muslims.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 145 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 45 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information, please contact the Sydney office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web:www.aidtochurch.org

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