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.
