Published May 10, 2002
Shields on his way to Magadan
Father Michael Shields, the Alaskan who pastors a church in Magadan, was allowed back into Russia after spending a month in Southcentral Alaska.
In April, Russian officials at the Moscow airport stopped the bishop of Eastern Siberia, a Polish citizen, and, without explanation, ordered him back onto an airplane leaving the country. That incident left Father Shields wondering if he might be denied entry too.
But the well-known priest called Anchorage on May 1 to say he had made it through immigration control at Moscow’s Sheremetevo 2 airport.
"He was tired but you could tell his spirits were up," said Brian Kuzel, director of the Anchorage Archdiocese’s Russian Desk.
Father Shields planned to travel from Moscow to Irkutsk, the see of expelled Bishop Jerzy Mazur, and then on to Magadan. Father Shields has been pastor of Nativity of Jesus Parish in Magadan since 1994.
Although Russia offered no official explanation as to why Bishop Mazur was expelled, observers say it is clearly related to the anti-Catholic tirade by Russian Orthodox leaders who are angry that Pope John Paul II created dioceses in Russia.
Since the pope’s February move, there have been sporadic anti-Catholic protests in front of Catholic churches, and the Duma, Russia’s parliament, passed a nonbinding resolution to deny visas to "representatives of the Vatican." Another proposal pending in the Duma would shut down the newly formed dioceses.
Orthodox wrath extended all the way to Magadan, a city of 125,000 on the country’s relatively remote eastern shore. Shortly after the creation of the dioceses, Father Shields received a letter from the Magadan provincial government questioning his right as a foreigner to be the head of a church in Russia. Father Shields hired an attorney and is awaiting a legal resolution.
He declined to comment on the lawsuit during his time in Alaska to avoid drawing attention, he told the Anchor.
"The threat of the lawsuit was still hanging over him," Kuzel said May 2. "That’s why we thought he might be flagged in the (Russian immigration) system."
Kuzel, whose office coordinates financial support for the Magadan parish, said the fact that Father Shields wasn’t prevented from entering Russia could be a sign that "things are being normalized — or at least that it’s not an all out anti-Catholic campaign."
He noted that an order to halt construction of a Catholic church in the northwestern Russian city of Pskov had been reversed, allowing work to resume with some modifications to its design.
The fate of the Pskov church is significant because in Magadan, too, the Catholic community is building a new church.
The reason Father Shields came to Alaska last month was to talk about his work in Russia and ask for support for the church construction project. He visited 10 parishes and raised $50,000 while he was here.
The total cost of the Magadan church will be around $950,000, Father Shields said. The parish is now about $100,000 short of that figure.
During his Alaska stay Father Shields also visited the Anchorage Assembly, which passed a resolution "recognizing and supporting Father Michael Shields for his efforts in promoting mutually beneficial activities to benefit peoples in both Anchorage and Magadan." The two are sister cities.