SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan (UCAN) -- Authorities in Uzbekistan's second-largest city banned cooked meals at a Church-run soup kitchen, so poor people have to be satisfied with snacks instead of a weekly hot lunch.

About 120 people still come to the house between noon and 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, and parish volunteers hand them plastic bags with bread, sausage and cheese at the gate.

The people used to enter the house and eat a sit-down hot lunch the volunteers prepared, but local authorities banned the practice as of mid-February.

St. John the Baptist Parish opened the soup kitchen in January 2002 in the one-story house located in a Muslim neighborhood. It served as a church for a few years in the 1990s. But as more and more "beggars" showed up for the weekly meal, neighbors complained.

Father Lucjan Szymanski, the parish priest, told UCA News, "Since the place is registered as a private house, the mass gathering is illegal." Making sandwiches for outside consumption also requires permission from the sanitation department.

So every Tuesday morning, two parish women slice and pack bread, cheese and sausage, which the visitors receive gratefully nonetheless.

Alim, a part-time construction worker, started coming to the soup kitchen only after the hot lunches were stopped. Convinced that municipal authorities run the soup kitchen, he expressed happiness that "the state is giving a helping hand."

Alim's colleague, Rachmon, says Polish people feed them. He knows the charity has something to do with Christianity, but knows nothing about the Catholic Church. Two years ago Rachmon came to the soup kitchen and enjoyed the hot lunches.

"I think it was more substantial before, and we were able to sit down and talk with each other at those lunches," he said.

Despite the general preference for the former hot meals, no lunch bags remain come 1 p.m.

Alina, a 55-year-old member of the Russian Orthodox Church, took the last bag on a recent Tuesday. She and her daughter live on what amounts to US$20 a month. Her son is in the army and cannot help out.

"Of course a hot lunch is better, but when you are hungry it doesn't matter," Alina told UCA News. She said it had been two days since she last ate a substantial meal.

Father Szymanski does not plan to get bogged down in all the legal procedures required to restart the soup kitchen in full. But the Conventual Franciscan priest is searching for other ways to offer meals to poor people who need them, possibly on an individual basis.

The main St. John the Baptist Church building in this ancient, largely Muslim trading center was built in 1915. After communists seized power in Russia, which ruled Central Asia at the time, the new Soviet rulers confiscated the church in 1917. Uzbekistan emerged as an independent country in 1991, with the demise of the Soviet Union.

The house where the priest has been running the soup kitchen, in another part of the city, was used for Masses before the original church building was returned to the Catholic Church in 1998. About 30 people attend Mass at the church on Sundays.

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(Accompanying photos available at here)