KARAGANDA, Kazakhstan (UCAN) -- Parishioners of St. Joseph Cathedral Parish in Karaganda feel closer to God because of the nine hours their cathedral is open each day for Eucharistic adoration.

Svetlana Gotovskaya, 38, finds the opportunity especially valuable, since she lives next to the cathedral and can start her day with adoration.

"I pray to God to bless my family for the whole day and thank him for his blessings," Gotovskaya told UCA News in late October. She said she finds it difficult to pray alone at home, due to the pressure of chores and taking care of her five children.

For another Menzilya Akhmetjanova, 57, the daytime adoration has become a daily inspiration. She goes to the cathedral every day to pray before the Blessed Sacrament.

"I pray to the Virgin Mary and all the saints for their intercession, and this prayer helps me a lot," Akhmetjanova said.

The daily adoration hours began on July 16, the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Karaganda believes this was a good start for fostering "deep and intensive prayer," a feature of Carmelite contemplative life.

"Prayer is the most significant part of Christian life, and it is important for believers to pray in a church as much as possible," Bishop Schneider told UCA News.

Elena Juravleva, 47, shares the bishop's sense of the importance of praying in church. She told UCA News that praying at home is not the same as praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament. She added that few people understand "the whole mystery of Jesus Christ hidden in the Eucharist."

Now, four times a week, Juravleva spends an hour in silent prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament, exposed in a monstrance, "to know Jesus better."

The monstrance is placed atop the tabernacle behind the cathedral altar for the nine hours the cathedral is open between the morning and evening Masses. Worshippers can come for Eucharistic adoration any time during this period.

Karaganda is 200 kilometers southeast of Astana, the Kazakh capital.

St. Joseph Cathedral, built as a house, is a legacy of Soviet religious repression. Workers from Ukraine and the Baltic republics were sent to Karaganda by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s to work in coal mines. Over the decades, Catholics had to gather secretly in houses, because the Soviet authorities did not allow religious activity.

When the Catholics collected money and eventually gained permission to build a worship place in the 1970s, the authorities still demanded that the church look like an ordinary house from the outside.

The first Mass in St. Joseph Cathedral was held on March 19, 1977, and the church was finally consecrated in 1978.

Now a large cathedral is under construction, due to replace the house as the main center of worship by the end of 2008.

Archbishop Jan Pawel Lenga of Karaganda, whom Pope John Paul II gave the personal title archbishop in 2003, started the first daytime Eucharistic adoration in 1996 at the Marian shrine in Ozernoe, 400 kilometers north of Astana. Around-the-clock adoration began at Our Mother of Perpetual Help Cathedral in Astana in 2002.

About 40,000 of the Kazakhstan's 250,000 Catholics live in Karaganda diocese. Muslims account for about 60 percent of the country's 15 million people, and another 30 percent are members of the Russian Orthodox Church.

END