KURGAN-TUBE, Tajikistan (UCAN) -- Catholic children laughed and played football near a two-meter-high statue of Vladimir Lenin, the first Soviet communist leader, in a public park in a suburb of this southern Tajik city.

The children, aged 8 to 15, have no memory of Soviet rule, which ended in 1991, so the figure of Lenin means little or nothing. The park was just a place to have fun on a Church-organized outing during their autumn vacation.

Two Incarnate Word priests and two nuns accompanied the 11 children from St. Joseph Parish in Dushanbe and 13 from St. Roch Parish in Kurgan-Tube, 80 kilometers south of the capital, as they spent the day playing games and praying together. Most of the youngsters were ethnic Russians, but there were ethnic Tajiks as well. All of them speak Russian.

"This small trip to Kurgan-Tube was part of our program for children during their vacations," said Sister Maria Malaika, an organizer of the visit. "It is good that children of different parishes can pray, mix and play together. It is good for both communities," the Argentine missioner told UCA News.

The Vakhsh valley, where Kurgan-Tube is located, was one of the places to which Soviet leader Joseph Stalin deported ethnic Germans in the mid-20th century. They joined Russians, Tajiks, Ukrainians, Uzbeks and other ethnic groups of the Soviet Union in this cotton-producing region.

Founded and built in the Soviet era, Kurgan-Tube now is the third-largest city in Tajikistan. It suffered much destruction during the 1992-1993 civil war between government and Islamic radicals, which forced most of the population of European origin to emigrate to Russia and other countries. St. Roch, one of three parishes in the country, was restored only in 1998.

"There are not so many parishes in Tajikistan, therefore an opportunity to see children from other communities is useful for our kids," said the trip's main organizer, Father Juan Carlos Sack, who heads St. Joseph Parish. "Children can find new friends, see the different reality that children from another parish face or just spend a good time in nice company."

The group visited the dam of a reservoir near Kurgan-Tube and than went to the suburban park. Boys played football on a 20-meter-square patch of ground, while the girls and nuns played volleyball and blindman's buff.

"I liked the dam, the entire trip. We seldom get out of Dushanbe," Maxim Gurezov, 13, commented afterward.

"For different reasons our children don't have plenty of opportunities to go out of their native cities," acknowledged Father Pedro Lopez, who heads St. Roch Parish. "We want to give them this kind of opportunity" during their vacations, he continued. "And what is important is they can pray together."

On the way to and from Kurgan-Tube, the young St. Joseph parishioners prayed the rosary. After lunch, the children visited the grave of one of their young friends, who died this year due to meningitis, and they attended Mass at Saint Roch Church afterward.

Father Sack recalled the recent observance of All Souls' Day to remind the children that death is inevitable, and everyone should be ready for it because no one knows when it will happen.

The remembrance added a touch of melancholy to an otherwise fun-filled day. "It is sad to know we will all finally end up in the cemetery, but what can we do about that?" remarked Ruslan, 15, from Kurgan-Tube.

Father Sack told UCA News: "People usually hide from kids the fact of death, but now we want to tell them about it. We appeal to them to live according to God's will, and we remind them that death is the moment of our eternal union with God if we have been observing his precepts."

Pastoral care in Tajikistan was entrusted to the Institute of the Incarnate Word in 1997 by the late Pope John Paul II. Five priests of the institute, based in Argentina, currently serve 250 Tajik Catholics in the three parishes and one mission station. Sister Maria Malaika and two other nuns of the Servants of the Lord and Holy Virgin of Matara, part of the Incarnate Word family, work with youth and children in St. Joseph Parish.

Almost all of Tajikistan's 6.5 million people are Muslims or members of the Russian Orthodox Church, to which about 3 percent of the people belong.

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(Accompanying photos available at here)