ASTANA (UCAN) -- A village Marian shrine in Kazakhstan testifies to the Blessed Mother's role in sustaining local Catholics during religious repression when the country was a Soviet republic.

The significance of Mary, Queen of Peace Shrine in Ozernoe, a village north of Astana, the Kazakh capital, was explained in a report presented to the First Asian Congress of Shrine Rectors, held Oct. 20-25 near Manila. The congress gathered rectors and pilgrimage directors of 51 shrines in Asia.

Archbishop Tomasz Peta of Astana, former parish priest at the shrine in Ozernoe, current pastor Father Lucjan Pocalun and Filipino Franciscan Brother Joseph Moreno, who works in Kazakhstan, presented the report.

It begins by saying, "In the past, Kazakhstan was a land of sorrow, soaked with blood and tears of martyrs." It recounts that in the 1930s and 1940s, people of various nationalities within the former Soviet Union, some of them Catholics, were deported to the vast steppes of Kazakhstan. Thousands died there in "gulags," Soviet labor and penal camps.

"In extremely difficult life conditions without any priests or any other hope, (the Catholics) relied only on God and took up the rosary as a weapon of prayer," the report said. The rosary filled up for the absence of Mass and the Sacraments, as well as priests and churches, it explains.

The report detailed the history of the Mary, Queen of Peace shrine, which it says is a sign of God's providence and Our Lady's presence in Kazakhstan.

Ozernoe, which now has about 600 people, was founded in 1936 by Catholics deported from Ukraine, also then part of the Soviet Union.

In 1941, the snow around the area melted for three days beginning March 25, the Annunciation, which commemorates the appearance of an angel to Mary telling her she would bear Jesus. The melted snow formed a lake five kilometers from the village that was soon full of fish. The fish in the lake saved the people from famine during the Second World War.

Lasting gratitude to the Blessed Mother led Ozernoe villagers who built a church in the early 1990s to name it after Mary. the actual name, Mary, Queen of Peace, was given by a Dutch priest, Father Nico Hoogland, who sent a statue of the Blessed Mother from Holland for the church.

The villagers also wrote a hymn to the Blessed Mother after religious freedom was established following independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. It contains the verse: "You, Blessed Mother, opened the door for me into the Kazakh steppes and met me with the rosary in hand."

In 1995, Bishop Jan Pawel Lenga of Karaganda, then apostolic administrator of Kazakhstan, entrusted the country to Mary, Queen of Peace.

That is why, the report noted, Pope John Paul II's designation of October 2002-October 2003 as the Year of the Rosary was a great joy for the Catholics in Kazakhstan.

It said that when the pope visited Astana in 2001, he also "spiritually visited Ozernoe" and called it the national sanctuary of Kazakhstan. "It shows a great example of God's reward for the prayers and trust," the report added.

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