KARAGANDA, Kazakhstan (UCAN) -- Young members of the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches in Karaganda decided recently to improve their relations by resuming joint youth meetings.

Around 250 people gathered at Protecting Veil of the Mother of God Greek Catholic Church on Oct. 14 to celebrate its patronal feast. Among them were 40 Roman Catholic youth from St. Joseph Cathedral Parish and seminarians from the local Mary, Mother of the Church Seminary, the only Catholic seminary in Central Asia.

After the Mass dedicated to the Blessed Mother, 80 Roman and Greek Catholics took part in a Bible contest, a play and dances that youths prepared for the meeting.

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

Usually Roman and Greek Catholic youth gather separately in their parishes, but in September, Roman Catholics hosted a group of Greek Catholic youngsters at the seminary, where they joined in Eucharistic adoration, singing and a barbecue.

According to local youths, the initiatives reflected their mutual desire to renew meetings between youths of the two Catholic rites, last held four or five years ago.

The Greek Catholic community was registered in 1991 after Kazakhstan gained independence as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since they did not have their own church, they attended Mass at Roman Catholic St. Joseph Cathedral in Karaganda or gathered in private apartments.

The ties between the communities of the two rites were close until the Protecting Veil of Mother of God Greek Catholic Church and Blessed Aleksey Zaritsky Chapel were built, in 1997 and 2001, respectively, according to the youth. Over the last six years, joint programs became rare and stopped altogether, although some youths continued to meet on a personal basis.

Alena, a 19-year-old Greek Catholic, recalls that she first received Communion in a Roman Catholic Church. She goes to the Greek Catholic church regularly now, and was among those who initiated the restoration of ties between the two communities. "I am keen on having close relations between us," she told UCA News.

Oksana, a 19-year-old Roman Catholic, expressed her conviction that the various Catholic rites "reflects the richness of the Church."

She told UCA News that she likes the fact that there are married priests in the Greek Catholic Church, who she thinks are better qualified to offer advice on marital matters.

"I want our relations with Greek Catholic youths to develop further," Oksana said. "We are one Church and we have one pope, so we should be together."

The Greek Catholic Church was born as a result of the Union of Brest in 1596, when some Orthodox bishops in Poland and Lithuania accepted the supremacy of the pope and Roman Catholic dogma while maintaining their own Byzantine rite.

In 1930s and 1940s, many Poles, Lithuanians and Ukrainians were forcibly relocated to Kazakhstan and Siberia after the Soviet Union annexed part of Poland and the Baltic countries. When many Greek Catholics refused to join the Russian Orthodox Church after the Soviet government nullified the Brest agreement, the government sent them to Kazakhstan to work in mining camps.

Kazakhstan has a population of 15 million, 60 percent of whom are Muslims and 30 percent Russian Orthodox. Roman Catholics number around 250,000 and Greek Catholics 2,000-3,000.

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