Published August 13, 2004
True dedication
Magadan’s Church of the Nativity consecrated, chapel blessed
After 12 years operating out of rented space and then a renovated apartment room, and 18 months more in a church that had not been formally consecrated, Nativity of Jesus Parish in Magadan, Russia, finally has a "proper" worship space.
Archbishop Roger Schwietz joined three of Russia’s four Catholic bishops at a July 4 Mass in which the two-tier building was anointed with chrism, the sacramental oil, in the formal consecration rite.
In the days preceding the church dedication the bishops also blessed the Mercy Center, the parish outreach operation located in the church basement, and the Chapel of Martyrs, a small gathering place next to the church dedicated to the millions who died in Josef Stalin’s notorious slave labor camps.
Magadan is part of the Diocese of St. Joseph in Irkutsk, Russia, but its history is inextricably connected to the Anchorage Archdiocese.
Retired Anchorage Archbishop Francis Hurley founded the parish in January 1991, in the midst of the breakup of the Soviet Union, and established an Anchorage office to coordinate support for Magadan’s fledgling Catholic community. In 1994, the archbishop allowed Anchorage priest Father Michael Shields to go to Magadan, and two years later a second American priest who was working in the archdiocese, Father David Means, joined Father Shields as associate pastor at Nativity of Jesus. Both men have been stationed in Magadan ever since.
"The consecration was the anointing we needed to now go further and deeper," Father Shields told the Anchor in an e-mail interview after the dedication Mass. "I sense the Lord prepared us for this year of great grace. The time we had together was like swimming in an ocean of grace."
The Mass started with the ringing of Nativity of Jesus’ four large bells that hang in a tower above the church entry.
Standing just outside the church doors on either side of the tower, each of the four bishops took the rope attached to a bell and rang the massive instruments for about 30 seconds.
Inside, the bishops used holy water and chrism to bless the altar, doorways and Stations of the Cross.
The 200-seat church was full for the event. Near the conclusion, Archbishop Schwietz, with the help of an interpreter, assured the congregation of continued support from the Anchorage Archdiocese.
After the Mass Father Shields asked parishioners about the consecration ceremony.
"We all experienced a felt difference when the walls of the church were anointed and the altar," he told the Anchor. "We described it like the church was receiving baptism — and in Russian the word for consecration can mean baptism."
Since the parish had been worshiping in the new church for 18 months before the dedication, someone joked that the church had been in the catechumenate, the period of preparation for full initiation into the Catholic faith.
The parish had a real catechumenate — for people — that culminated in the confirmation of more than 30 youths and adults at the church dedication Mass, according to Brian Kuzel, who coordinates support for the parish from his Anchorage office. Kuzel was among the group of 10 Alaska Catholics and four other visitors who spent the first two weeks of July in Magadan.
Kuzel said it was the parish’s largest confirmation class ever, but that was probably because it was the fist confirmation at Nativity of Jesus in several years.
The parish has grown at a gradual pace since it was created in 1991 with 12 original members. There are now 200 Catholic parishioners in this city of about 115,000 people.
The parish’s slow growth is understandable. For 70 years all religious expression had been powerfully suppressed by the atheist communist regime of the Soviet Union. Archbishop Hurley and Father Shields celebrated the first public Mass ever in Magadan in December 1990.
The city of Magadan traces its origins to Stalin’s reign, when it began as a staging hub for slave labor camps in the region halfway up Russia’s east coast. Millions served in the gulags from the late 1920s to the mid 1950s, many for the "crime" of espousing faith. Estimates on the number who died in the camps or as a result of their imprisonment range from three million to 20 million, according to Father Shields.
"Statistic don’t describe the horror and the devastation of the time of the prison camps that is still haunting the soul of Russia," he said.
The day before Nativity of Jesus Church was consecrated, the parish gathered for the blessing of the Chapel of Martyrs, the small building a few paces from the church that is dedicated to victims of the gulags.
Three survivors of the gulags spoke at the blessing ceremony.
Andrey Vasilevich Kravtzov said he was 16 or 17 in 1945 when he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for studying Ukraine history and literature and belonging to a religious family.
He said he worked 12 hours a day with very little food, building a military factory in Estonia before being shipped to Magadan to work in a uranium mine.
"Not very far from our camp, when the ground would thaw in the spring and summer, we would dig pits and throw in the dead bodies. Conditions were just horrible. People died like flies."
Another survivor, Branislava Klemavitchute, served seven years of hard labor in the camps. She said she never stopped praying, and even took part in clandestine Masses that imprisoned priests celebrated in the camps. Klemavitchute and others made rosaries by rolling little pieces of bread into beads.
Father Shields estimates that there are 150-200 "repressed" — the local term for camp survivors — left in the city of Magadan. The parish has developed an outreach ministry to them that includes financial assistance for medical care, food, transportation and social opportunities.
With the formal opening of the Mercy Center in the church basement over the July 4 weekend, Nativity of Jesus formally begins a new outreach effort. When the needed equipment is purchased, the center will feature a health clinic, soup kitchen and food distribution center.
Various other parish activities take place in the Mercy Center already, such as this summer’s vacation Bible school and a youth retreat that included three youths from the Anchorage Archdiocese and 14 Magadan teens.