Published December 20, 2002
EDITORIAL
Prayers being answered in Magadan
When the new Catholic church in Magadan, Russia, is blessed on Christmas day, the 70-year-old dream of a group of Franciscan Sisters and the slightly more recent dream of a former California archbishop will be coming alive.
Archbishop Joseph McGucken noted during the 1970 ordination of Francis Hurley as bishop of Juneau that the new bishop might someday establish ties between Alaska and its vast atheist neighbor to the west.
Twenty years later Archbishop Hurley celebrated the first public Mass in Magadan and helped a handful of locals start the city’s first Catholic parish. Next week he will bless Magadan’s first Catholic church, Nativity of Jesus.
The group of Franciscan Sisters was based in Leningrad until 1930, when they were expelled from their convent by Stalin’s religion-suppressing regime. The sisters sent the following plea to the Primate of Poland:
"When you return to Italy, please inform the Holy Father that our churches are empty, our bells are silent, the vigil lights in front of our tabernacles are extinguished, our priests have been deported. Nevertheless, we are certain that the time will come when our bells will ring again, our priests will return wearing the crowns of confessors, the vigil lights will glow once more, and we shall once again sing our religious hymns in our solemnly decorated churches. Christ conquers!"
Some prayers are answered and some dreams do come true.