Rorate Caeli

You report: First TLM in Rostov-on-Don, Russia since Soviet times

July 22, 2012: TLM in Rostov-on-Don


From Mr. Oleg-Michael Martynov of Una Voce Russia:

Traditional Latin Mass was celebrated in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, perhaps for the first time since 1952 when the city's only Roman Catholic parish was “liquidated” by the Communist authorities. Its church was blown up. 

Forty years later, after the Soviet regime collapsed, the parish of the Last Supper was given a new birth by a young missionary priest from Poland, Fr. Jaroslaw Wisniewski who now serves in the Central Asian republic
of Uzbekistan. A somewhat unusual, but very inspiring church was erected in a nice park area, together with magnificent parish facilities. 

Fr. Wladislaw Kloc, SDB, another Pole who has spent many years as a missionary in Zambia and then in Russia, celebrated on Sunday, July 22, his first usus antiquior Mass. Much assistance was rendered by Una Voce Russia, both its local members and those who have traveled some 1100 kilometers (more than 650 miles) from Moscow to provide help and council. 

Rostov-on-Don is soon supposed to become Russia's third place, after Moscow and St. Petersburg, and first one in the Diocese of Saint Clement in Saratov, to have regularly scheduled Masses celebrated according to the norms of Summorum Pontificum.