Most Holy Mother of God...

...is a historic Catholic church that stands on a steep hill overlooking Vladivostok's beautiful Golden Horn Bay. The cathedral was constructed during the pre-revolutionary period of 1908 - 1922, and dedicated in 1921. The cornerstone in the main entrance reads 1908.

About twenty members of our Catholic community were privileged to attend Mass there today. It was a fitting way to start Victory Day, which is a national Russian celebration commemorating the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.

During the Soviet era, the communist party confiscated this church and altered it for use as an archive. For over 60 years, no Masses were celebrated there.

Following the fall of the USSR in 1991, a young Soviet naval officer from Kiev converted to Catholicism. While stationed in Vladivostok, he and some friends advertised for other Catholics. That group became the nucleus of the "Community of the Most Holy Mother of God." With the announcement of religious freedom, the group registered as a legal religious organization. They also wrote to Bishop Werth in Novosibirsk asking for a priest to reopen the parish.

On November 10, 1991 Very Rev. Myron Effing from the United States celebrated Mass on the front steps of the cathedral. The following February he and Brother Daniel Maurer returned to Vladivostok to be the first resident Catholic clergy in 60 years. The Spanish Sisters of Charity of St. Anne came to Vladivostok in 1998 and began a community.

For almost twenty years now this rejuvenated community has assiduously worked to restore this historic house of worship...complete with stations of the cross procured from a church in Pennsylvania, on which they replaced the English verbiage with Cyrillic. The parish now boasts 475 registered parishioners, no small feat given that only about 2% of Russia's population subscribes to non-Orthodox Christianity.

Today's Mass was concelebrated by the same Father Myron Effing, Father Dan Maurer, and our own Father Sal Aguilera. Except for Father Sal's part, it was conducted in Russian, but both the liturgy and the hymns were very familiar to us. Father Dan even rendered an English summary of his homily.

In the vestibule before Mass a nun approached a group of us and said, "Hablan espanol?" I was delighted to respond, "Hablo un poquito espanol." Wherupon ensued a delightful conversation in Spanish with this nun who hails from near Madrid and has been in Vladivostok for thirteen years. That would be "hace trece" in espanol, but she is from Spain, so she clearly said, "hathe trethe" in the typical Castilian lisp of some Spaniards. I haven't heard that pronunciation since Father Valentin Hoyos, also from Spain, taught us Spanish in high school.

What a strange world. Si es verdad!