NEW LATIN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN RUSSIA

Fr John Salter writes in Chrysostom, Pascha 2010

 

     In 2004 Pope John-Paul II sent Cardinal Walter Kasper, the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (Cardinal Cassidy’s successor), to Russia with the greatly venerated icon of Our Lady of Kazan. This had been entrusted to the care of the Pope in the final years of Communism in Russia. Pope John-Paul had hoped to be invited to Russia by Patriarch Alexis II, when he would have personally handed over the icon to the Patriarch, but the invitation never came.

      About ninety years ago the church in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tartarstan had been taken over by the Bolsheviks. As its name may imply the territory is largely Sunni Moslem of Tartar descent, with a Russian Orthodox minority and a Latin Catholic presence of about 500 faithful. The church is being paid for by the government of Tartarstan, and although constructed on a different site, is to be a replica of the former church, which is beyond restoration as a place of worship.

     The furnishings, vestments and a Parish Centre have been funded by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. The parish priest Father Diogenes Urkiza described the re-building as a ‘miracle’; and it is probably not coincidental that the Kazanskaya  icon was regarded as Russia’s greatest miraculous icon. The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, sent Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the former Secretary of State to the Holy See, to represent the Vatican.  The Russian Orthodox Archbishop  Anastasy of Kazan welcomed the re-building of the church.