| Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish in Astana |
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Parish priest:Vicar:
- Fr. Piotr Pytlowany
- Fr. Aleksander Fix
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Address:
473033 Astana |
Fr. Livio LodigianiAddress:
Prospect Respubliki 62, kv. 96
473000 AstanaTel./fax. 3172 - 217085
Address of Sisters Diners of Eucharistic JesusPos. Energetic
Wysockogo St. 13
473000 AstanaTel/fax. + 3172 - 352562
Our Mother of Perpetual Help parish in Astana
The history of this parish is like the history of many others in Kazakhstan. It began in the 1930s and 1940s when Poles, Germans, Ukrainians and peoples of the Baltic region from the western parts of Ukraine and Belorussia, from the Volga region and other regions of the former Soviet Union were deported into Kazakhstan.
The church was silent there until 1958, where the believers met secretly. Fr. Bronislav Jepetsky, Fr. Vladislav Bukovinsky, Fr. Alexander Chyra, Fr. Joseph Kuchinski, and Fr. Alexander Saretski came for secret ecclesiastical meetings with the congregation.
The first attempt was made from 1958 to 1959 to legalize the city’s Catholic community under the conditions of the Soviet regime. A house for prayer was bought with the believers’ money. But the initiator of the legalization -- a layman named Vladislav Shyshkevich -- was prosecuted for giving a bribe to an official, and was arrested and condemned for a year. A priest from Lithuania, Fr. Prockopie, a Pole by nationality, was working in the city at that time. After Shyshkevich`s arrest, the house was confiscated and Fr. Prockopie had to return secretly to his native land. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were private houses in Tselinograd (now Astana) where believers met secretly for prayer. Sometimes Fr. Aloisy Kashuba from Livov, Fr. Gottlieb from Frunse (Bishkek) and Fr. Jury Potereiko from Almaty came to visit.
Four Sisters Votaries of Jesus in the Eucharist came to the city in May of 1976, helping in the formation of the parish.
The Catholic community of the city received official permission for registration on September 20, 1979, after a long and poignant petition to the municipal administration. The house for prayer, which had been bought with the parishioners’ money, was dedicated on October 14, 1979.
The first priest came for regular work in the parish in 1980. He was Fr. Boleslav Babrauskas (a Jesuit) from Lithuania. He was deprived of his right to serve in the parish for «insubordination to the administration» in September of 1984, and had to return to Lithuania.
From 1985 to 1988, a priest from Latvia, Fr. Vikenty Barzda, carried on religious worship within the community. He came three times a year, and attended to the believers of the region for a 10-day period each time he visited.
In July of 1988, after graduating from Riga Higher Theological Seminary, Fr. Otto Messmer came to Tselinograd by a cardinal order. He had entered the seminary by the local administration’s order (as it was demanded at that time). Fr. Messmer is now prior of the parish.
On May 18, 1995 the Apostolic Administrator of Kazakhstan, Bishop Jan Paul Lenga, gave his blessing to build a new church at Solena Balka Creek. The building was begun on November 2, 1995, when the first piles for the foundation were driven into. On May 4, 1997 he sanctified the cornerstone of the future temple, which had been brought by the Sisters Votaries of Jesus in the Eucharist from the Holy Land.
On June 27,1999, in the presence of the nuncio of the Holy Communion table, Archbishop Marian Oles, Bishop Jan Paul Lenga, representatives of the republican and municipal administration, a special envoy of His Holiness Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Joachim Messner Archbishops of Cologne sanctified the newly built temple of God, of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in Astana.
Translation: Irina Shirshova
