ASIA/UZBEKISTAN – Missionaries at the service of the “little flock”, with great hopes for the new year

ASIA/UZBEKISTAN – Missionaries on the service of the “little flock”, with nice hopes for the brand new 12 months

Samarkand (Agenzia Fides) – “In Uzbekistan the Soviet custom remains to be sturdy, which acknowledges the New 12 months as an important vacation of this era, however we’ve got tried to convey the significance of Christmas to everybody; to do that, we ready ourselves as greatest we might, paying explicit consideration to the Vigil of December 24 and the Mass of December 25. On the similar time, we glance to the brand new 12 months with nice hope: we’ve got nice expectations for 2022. The vice parish priest and I are two missionaries who work as in the event that they have been to serve a group of ten thousand parishioners, even when in actuality we solely have thirty”. That is what Fr. Ariel Alvarez Toncovich, priest of the Institute of the Incarnate Phrase and parish priest of the church of St. John the Baptist within the Uzbek metropolis Samarkand says to Fides.
The missionary underlines how the small variety of trustworthy is just not a motive for discouragement: “We’re conscious of the truth that right here in Samarkand we’re not referred to as to work for crowds of believers, so we put all our efforts even in relation to organizing initiatives for a single individual: a number of days in the past, for instance, we lived the non secular workout routines even when just one woman had joined. It was actually price it as a result of it was a possibility for her to deepen her spirituality. Equally, yearly we have to be glad if we’ve got not less than one baptism: properly, this 12 months we celebrated 4, so the steadiness is admittedly constructive. Our group is small however alive; we’re sure that it’s going to develop additional, as a result of after the restore of the parish constructing, the inhabitants of Samarkand come to go to it extra typically”.
Actually, the second a part of the restoration work of your complete parish construction has not too long ago been accomplished: if the inside of the church was renovated from June to the tip of August 2021, in latest weeks the courtyard and the areas supposed for the oratory have been mounted up: “The church is taken into account a historic monument of the town and attracts many vacationers, so we’ve got made the outside extra dignified, in order that those that method it really feel welcomed. What’s missing now are the bells, eliminated in 1974: our want for subsequent 12 months is to make the voice of God ring once more from the church within the metropolis”, he concludes.
After spending 8 years on a mission in Kazakhstan, Fr. Alvarez was despatched to Samarkand collectively together with his confrere, Fr. Paolo Giacinti, exactly to relaunch pastoral exercise within the native parish. Along with that of Samarkand, in Uzbekistan there are 4 different parishes and about 3,000 baptized: there are about 700 trustworthy current within the capital Tashkent, along with others current in Bukhara, Urgench and Fergana. In Angren, the place plans to construct a brand new church are deliberate, there are 25 trustworthy. The Uzbek inhabitants, made up of 30 million inhabitants, is 90% Muslim. About 3.5% are of Russian Orthodox Christian religion, whereas one other 3% embody small Christian communities of different denominations, together with Catholics. (LF) (Agenzia Fides, 28/12/2021)

Share: