Catholic Church in Ural'sk

We cordially invite you to solemn opening

of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Uralsk

celebrated by

Apostolic Nuncio in Kazakhstan

Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendia

On August 24^th 2008 at 11 am

Clergy

Rev. Jan Trela
Fr. Peter Sakmar

Jaroslavskaya St. 6/ 48,
Uralsk, 090 001

Tel/Fax: +7 (7112) 541497

E-mail: jantrela@ok.kz

From our history

One day we spoke together with our Parish Priest, Father Jan Trela about the quantity of churches in Uralsk. I told him that before the Revolution in Uralsk there were 17 orthodox churches and 2 mosques. It was a great number of churches for such a small town. So we could conclude that people had deep faith before. Surely people supported this number of churches.

Father Jan said that the Catholic Church there is not a long time in Uralsk and in this district. I objected because it was not a truth. Uralsk was a town of exiled Poles after national-liberation Movement of Migurski. There were also a lot of deported German people and according to my mother’s story in the village Rosental, some kilometers far from Uralsk there was one Catholic Church. In that village lived also a lot of deported people. Another parish there was in Pridorozhnyj, Uralsk district. There my mother Susanna Hübscher, maiden name Darscht, was born. To my great surprize I read in a second issue of the magazine “Credo” from the year 2007 that in Pridorozhnyj actually there was a catholic parish. My mother’s story was confirmed.

My mother was a catholic and father’s a protestant. Grandma Emma was a protestant and Grandma Regina’s a catholic. On Sunday all the believers: Catholics and Protestants came together to somebody’s home to pray. They all together prayed for dead: Catholics for Protestants and vice versa. The confession of the Christian faith was restricted in those times. The number of believers wasn’t so big, that’s why they united. Our grandmothers took us, children, together with them and taught us how to knee and pray: “Vater unser” and “Verhailente Maria”. We lived at that time in Aleksiejewka. It was a village of exiled people, to whom my parents belonged too. There wasn’t a river and a tree, because the water in a river had dried. All around we could see only poor dugouts rooted in the ground. Outside of village there were ruins surrounded by rosebushes. It was a result of civil war and drying water. I remember a huge and a very beautiful building at this awful and poor back round. In this building there were club, office, medical unit and primary school. I attended this school in the years of 1958th-60th. My mother explained me that before it was a church.

Then came the new time, when the virgin lands of Kazakhstan were extensively cultivated. Dugouts were destroyed and new houses and new school were built. That beautiful building decayed and also was destroyed. Now I am so sorry that I haven’t got the picture of it. Even I think now that maybe it wasn’t so nice as I imagined in my childhood. In some time my Catholic Grandma Regina died and Grandma Emma went to her daughter to live there. I finished my first school and started another one, joined Pioneers, Komsomol organizations and became far from God. I can’t say that I didn’t believe at all, but I was passive. When I finished my school, I moved to Uralsk and started attending Orthodox Church twice a year: on Resurrection and Baptism of Lord. My children were baptized there secretly.

In the year 2003 I heard that in Uralsk there was opened Catholic Church and first my son started attending then me. I came the first time there because I wanted to ask to pray for my dead father. In Orthodox Church they didn’t want to pray for him, because he was a protestant. I met Fathers Zbigniew and Bernard. They explained me everything about the Liturgy, I remembered forgotten prayers from my childhood. I went to them for advice, their preaching helped me to understand Holy Mysteries, which for others were already the truth. But I wasn’t so sure to become a Catholic at once when Father Bernard asked me about my confession of faith, although I attended Church a long time, but I was not ready. In a short time new Fathers Jan Trela and Wojciech Maslanka came to our parish. My husband was against my faith, because he thought I was in a sect. But I continued attending the church.

In the year of 2005 I became ill, the doctors couldn’t say the right diagnose. I thought that I should dye. Fathers Jan and Wojciech supported me in that very difficult for me time. I met also our Bishop Janusz Kaleta. The contact with him and his preaching had a great positive influence on me. I became calm. Once during my evening prayer I decided to become a Catholic, because I wanted to dye as a Catholic. On the 2^nd of September 2005 Fr. Jan Trela baptized me and God had a pity on me, the doctors could recognize what was the reason of my illness. I went to a hospital in Samara for cure and now I feel myself, thanks to God, very well. I am praying that we can see quickly our new building of the parish of Mother of God of Perpetual Help. So it was my way from the story’s of my grandmother and mother to my personal catholic faith.

Irina Titova (Erichovna)