DUSHANBE (UCAN) -- National Reconciliation Day is a public holiday in Muslim-majority Tajikistan, a chance to relax and maybe attend a traditional Tajik concert to celebrate.

It is also an opportunity for the handful of Catholics who lived through the civil war to reflect on how it and the eventual peace agreement, marked on the day, dramatically changed their community.

Incarnate Word Father Carlos Avila tries to put a bright face on it. Standing in the yard of St. Joseph Church in Dushanbe watching a group of children play, he told UCA News he would go to sleep with the sound of gunfire when he first arrived in Tajikistan from his native Argentina 12 years ago. Now he can "sleep soundly," he remarked.

The national holiday on June 27 marks the day in 1997 when the Tajik government and the United Tajik Opposition met in Moscow to sign an agreement formally ending hostilities. The war between the Muslim opposition groups and the government began one year after Tajikistan became independent in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union.

"National Reconciliation Day always reminds me about what the Church looked like during wartime and what we have now," recalled Father Avila, who heads the local Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II entrusted the Incarnate Word missioners with pastoral care in the sui iuris (self-governing) mission of Tajikistan when the pope separated it in 1997 from what was then the Apostolic Administration of Kazakhstan. The Institute of the Incarnate Word was founded in Argentina in 1984.

"When I first came to Tajikistan in 1996, it was a really difficult time for the country and for the Catholic community also," the priest recounted. While there were no military clashes in the capital at that time, the situation was tense, with the punctuation of sporadic gunfire.

Father Avila missed the worst of the war, but still had to pick up the pieces of the shattered Catholic community in its aftermath. "Scared by the war, Germans, who basically made up the Catholic community here, left the country," he said.

According to the mission superior, the last Catholic priest left Tajikistan one year before he arrived and most of the 30,000 German Catholics fled to Russia or Europe. The Tajik Church was founded by exiled Germans deported to Tajikistan from the Volga region during Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's repression in the middle of the 20th century. Most of the current 250 Catholics are Russian speakers who joined the Church after the civil war.

St. Joseph parishioner Taisia Gupalova remembers the difficult times when the community had no priest to look after it. "Everyone was so glad when a priest from Kazakhstan or Russia came to visit us for a day or two," the 68-year-old Catholic woman said, recalling the war years. "But unfortunately it was too seldom," she said.

Gupalova, an ethnic Russian, is one of the handful who witnessed the transition of the Church.

"During wartime, Holy Mass was the biggest present for Tajik Catholics," she said. "After the Argentinean priests came, we could have it every day, which is inexpressible joy for all of us," she added.

Father Avila said peace meant much for the Tajik Church, especially the chance to grow and develop.

"Now we can take children to hike in mountains or take them to a new bridge on the Pianj River, which was absolutely impossible 12 or 13 years ago when it was dangerous to go out of the city."

The end of the war also meant the end of the Catholic community's drastic decline.

"Catholics have stopped leaving Tajikistan, which has allowed us to keep our traditions in our parishes," he said.

Nonetheless, Father Avila admits the loss was huge. Now the Catholic community numbers just 250, a far cry from the tens of thousands before. Muslims make up about 97 percent of the population and Russian Orthodox less than 3 percent.

"We are still insignificantly small here, but I am sure the Tajik Church, hardened by the horrors of civil war, will grow and develop here," he said. "I hope it will never again face war and its consequences."

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