Published January 18, 2002
Hurley sees positive changes on Russia visit
Retired Archbishop Francis Hurley found upbeat spirits, a growing Catholic community and wider acceptance of the faith during a Christmas trip to the parish he founded 11 years ago in the Russian Far East. The archbishop also said that the two Alaskan priests who lead Nativity of Jesus Parish in Magadan are doing well and have no plans to come back anytime soon.
Nativity of Jesus, the first and only Catholic parish in the Russian east coast city, had huge turnouts for Christmas services, and work is progressing nicely on the new church the parish has been building for about a year now. On the Dec. 21-30 trip the archbishop also visited the parish’s mission church in the nearby fishing village of Ola and said it, too, seemed to be thriving.
"Even the streets seemed to be strung with more lights than I’d ever seen before," Archbishop Hurley said. Normally the city waits until New Year’s or the Jan. 7 Russian Orthodox Christmas celebration to put up lights, if it puts them up at all, he said.
The fact that the streets were lit the week of Dec. 25 and that a local television station filmed the parish children’s Mass on Christmas Eve led the archbishop to wonder if Magadan was becoming more supportive of religion. The television station taking notice of the Christmas celebration was "something that’s totally new," he said.
The camera crew must have arrived early to have gotten into the building for the children’s Mass. Nativity of Jesus is located in the basement floor of an apartment building, and has 45 seats. There were 110 children and 45 adults crammed into the space, the archbishop said.
Such tight quarters may be replaced in as little as nine months if construction goes as planned on the new Nativity of Jesus Church going up about a mile from the apartment site.
Nativity pastor Father Michael Shields told Archbishop Hurley he thought the large new church on a busy downtown street could be completed by November.
Workers are installing the plumbing and electrical material on the lower level of the building, which will become a social service center for the poor that Father Shields plans to call the Mercy Center. The upper level will be the worship space.
Fundraising continues for the new church, as the parish is about $200,000 shy of the estimated $750,000 it needs.
There have been some setbacks on the project, such as having to change architects and construction crews. But Father Shields and his associate pastor, Father David Means, remain enthusiastic and confident the project will stay on course, said the archbishop.
Both men are "doing very well" in their unusual assignment, Archbishop Hurley said. "I don’t get the sense that either of them plans to come back. Like most missionaries, wherever God’s call takes them, that is their home."
He said both men "take a lot of delight" in seeing the children respond favorably to religion, which was suppressed in Russia for 70 years under communism.
In Magadan, which served as a hub of Stalin’s gold-mining gulags from 1939-1954, the faith survived clandestinely. It wasn’t until the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1990-1 that religious freedom slowly began to reemerge.
Fathers Shields and Means several years ago began an outreach project to survivors of the gulags.
The men and women, who had been ostracized even after being freed from the labor camps, mostly kept to themselves and lived alone. The priests began coaxing the survivors, whom the locals call "the repressed," out of their apartments, bringing them together for singing, dancing, and socializing "just for the fun of it," Archbishop Hurley said.
He addressed a group of survivors during his Christmas trip, assuring them that just as they had survived the gulags, Americans would survive the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
The archbishop also had the chance to see the women of Madonna House, a Canada-based group that offers spiritual direction to people in Russia and teaches them how to pray.
The three women currently working in Magadan "are constantly being approached by the people," the archbishop said. "They’ve been very good for the spiritual tone of the community."
The Madonna House women and the Catholic priests are recognized on the street and appreciated for the help they provide, the archbishop said. That is another reminder of how different Magadan is now from when he celebrated the first Christmas Mass there 11 years ago, and, several weeks later, won approval from the government to start Nativity of Jesus Parish.