Published July 19, 2002
Judge upholds ruling supporting Fr. Shields’ Magadan ministry
Members of Nativity of Jesus Parish in Magadan, Russian Far East, are breathing a tentative sigh of relief in the wake of a second court decision that says their Alaskan pastor is legal.
A Magadan Province Court judge on July 2 upheld a lower court decision that Father Michael Shields of Anchorage is free to be the pastor of Nativity of Jesus even though he is not a Russian citizen. The provincial Ministry of Justice had challenged Father Shields’ status in February and took the parish to court.
In May, Magadan City Court cited a 1997 Russian federal law on religious freedom in ruling for the parish.
The provincial court judge took only 10 minutes to dismiss the government’s appeal of the initial ruling.
The quick dismissal and the thoroughly supportive lower court ruling make it highly unlikely that the case will be appealed further, Father Shields said, citing the parish’s lawyer.
But he added that nothing involving the Catholic church in Russia is certain, given that only about 1 percent of the population is Catholic.
"There is no such thing as a deep sigh of relief in Russia," said Father Shields, pastor of Nativity of Jesus since 1994. "Every day it’s a spiritual battle. But, this (the court ruling) is a biggie."
The ruling could have a significant impact across Russia, where roughly 90 percent of Catholic pastors are foreigners, he said.
"Any place where priests were threatened by this particular question, this is now settled and they can utilize this ruling as a strong precedent," Father Shields said.
Observers say the favorable rulings in Magadan may signify that a tense period in Catholic-Russian Orthodox relations is beginning to ease.
The firestorm erupted five months ago when Pope John Paul II announced that the church’s administrative structures in Russia would be upgraded to full-fledged dioceses.
Orthodox leaders loudly denounced the move as an invasion of their spiritual territory.
In April, Russia expelled two prominent Catholic leaders: an Italian priest who had been working in Moscow and Polish Bishop Jerzy Mazur, whose Siberian diocese includes Magadan. To date, neither has been allowed to return.
The religious turmoil made for a delicate situation in Magadan, where the 175-family Catholic community is building a new church. It took years to secure the property, funding and government signatures to begin the project, and parishioners were worried it would all be dismantled.
Larisa Kostik, a young catechist in the parish, said she was "devastated" to learn the Ministry of Justice was taking the parish to court over Father Shields’ status.
"I felt they were attacking my own freedom to practice my faith, and it was an unjust accusation," she told the Anchor through an interpreter.
If the government had succeeded in ousting Father Shields and his associate pastor, Father David Means of St. Louis, Nativity of Jesus "couldn’t go on," she said. There are far too few Russian priests to expect one would be available to fill the Americans’ shoes.
Father Shields said Orthodoxy is the "central religious and cultural expression" in Russia, but Catholicism has been present there "in some level" for centuries.
Magadan has a higher per capita Catholic population than most of Russia because Stalin had thousands of Catholics arrested for their beliefs and sent to slave labor camps in the area, Father Shields said.
The priest estimated that half of his parishioners are people who hid their faith during the communist era or discovered Catholicism in their family backgrounds after the demise of the Soviet Union, which suppressed religion.