The Catholic diocese of Saint Clement is based in the city of Saratov, on the Volga River in southern Russia, and serves an area of some 550,000 square miles (1.4 million km²) – twice the area of France. Yet there are just 20,000 or so Catholics living scattered across this vast region, served by just 19 priests. Often they consist of no more than a tiny community in one locality, sometimes just a single Catholic family, with the nearest Catholic neighbours living hundreds of kilometres away. Needless to say, it is impossible to build churches in every one of these micro-communities and in any case, even if it were possible, there would be far too few priests to minister to them.
Obviously, therefore, in order to reach these groups of Catholics the priests have to travel vast distances. Yet it is vital that they do so, since no priest means no sacraments, and this could ultimately mean the loss of a sense of Catholic identity and belonging, and eventually to discouragement and loss of faith. So begins a vicious circle whereby fading faith leads to falling religious vocations and fewer priests to reduced pastoral care and still further estrangement from the Church – and thereby still less fertile soil for the nurturing of local vocations. To this day, most of the priests in the diocese still come from abroad.
Again, such long distances mean high fuel costs. But if the priest cannot afford the fuel, then he cannot visit the community and the Catholic faithful are left waiting in vain to take part in Holy Mass, to receive communion, have their children baptised or see them married. And these are people who already have to live daily with the sense of extreme isolation from their brothers and sisters in the Faith. Consequently, the priests are dependent on outside support in order to be able to visit their widely scattered flocks and bring them new faith and courage.
ACN has been regularly supporting the cost of this pastoral travel for the priests of the diocese of Saint Clement, and we are doing so once again this year with a contribution of 15,000 Euros.
Code: 427-04-49
