KARAGANDA, Kazakhstan (UCAN) -- Catholics have honored Blessed Aleksey Zaritskiy, who became a symbol of Church survival under the Soviet communists.

On June 27, about 100 people paid their homage at Blessed Aleksey Zaritskiy Church in Karaganda, 200 kilometers southeast of Astana, Kazakhstan's capital.

The church was named for the Ukrainian priest whom Pope John Paul II beatified with 24 other Greek Catholics on that day six years earlier, during the late pontiff's visit to Ukraine. The beatified Catholics had been victims of Soviet persecution in the 1930-40s.

During the special Mass, Father Vasiliy Hovera, the head of Greek Catholics in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, said the example of Blessed Zaritskiy is important because he was a contemporary of many people who are still alive.

"People are not born saints but become so," Father Hovera said. "Aleksey's life was a constant ascent to holiness," and it should be an example for all Catholics, he added. However, Father Hovera reproached them, as well as himself, for not using the religious freedom that they now have in full.

Father Zaritskiy was born in Ukraine in 1912 and ordained a priest in 1936. At that time, Josef Stalin, the Soviet communist leader, was cracking down on religious followers and the priest was arrested in 1948 for saying underground Masses. After six years in Soviet prisons, he was exiled to Karaganda in 1954.

Stalin died in 1953, but the Soviet government dismissed charges against Father Zaritskiy only in 1957 and then allowed him to serve Greek and Roman Catholics in Russia and Kazakhstan. However, he was rearrested in 1962 and died of gastritis and high blood pressure in a labor camp the next year.

Besides Father Hovera, five other Greek Catholic priests and also Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Karaganda took part in the special Mass.

Bishop Schneider remarked at the Mass: "Looking into Father Zaritskiy's life, we can learn that the most important wealth is God and nobody can deprive us of it. If we have God in our souls, we are rich. This is what Father Zaritskiy lived for, and I wish all of you to be rich in God."

Blessed Aleksey Zaritskiy Church was dedicated on Sept. 24, 2006. Before construction was started in 2003, people would meet in private houses to pray. The parish that also bears his name was founded in 1993.

The idea of naming the church for a priest who died in a Soviet labor camp came from then-Father Schneider, whose parents knew Father Zaritskiy because he regularly offered Mass in their home. Father Schneider was named Auxiliary Bishop of Karaganda on April 8, 2006, and ordained a bishop on June 2, 2006.

The bishop noted that Father Zaritskiy did not divide Catholics by rites but served all Roman and Greek Catholics, and the believers appreciated this.

Emilia, 69, a Catholic woman, remembers a secret Christmas Mass she attended in 1956. Father Zaritskiy's Masses were a real consolation for her, she told UCA News, because, she could listen to the Gospel through him after a gap of 11 years without Mass. "He administered the sacraments and told us about God, and I didn't miss a single Mass," she said.

In the 1930-40s, many people, including Catholic clergy and faithful, were sent to Kazakhstan, which is larger than Western Europe, whenever the Society government doubted their loyalty. Freedom of worship was curtailed, and believers could again openly practice their religion only from the late 1980s.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Apostolic Administration for Kazakhstan and Central Asia was established in Karaganda. In 1997, sui iuris (self-governing) missions were opened in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. In 1999, the Kazakhstan Church was divided into the diocese of Karaganda and the apostolic administrations of Almaty, Astana and Atyrau.

Pope John Paul II made Astana an archdiocese and Almaty a diocese in 2003.

About 60 percent of Kazakhstan's 16 million people are Muslims and another 30 percent are Russian Orthodox believers. The country also has about 3,000 Greek Catholics and 250,000 Roman Catholics.

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