"Conversion of Russia" Update

Putin Moves to Bar Catholic Priests, but not Protestant Ministers

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        Claims of the "conversion of Russia" since the "consecration" of 1984 become more ridiculous by the day. On September 9, 2005, CWNews.com reported that "A Moscow-based lawyer specializing in religious liberty believes that the Russian government is raising the barriers against foreign missionaries seeking to enter the country." No kidding! Vladimir ("the Practicing Christian") Putin has been up to that business since his 1997 law on "freedom of conscience," which required the Catholic Church to register with the government as a foreign sect, whose priests (nearly all of them from outside Russia) are given only temporary visas, revocable at will.

        Referring to a report by the Forum 18 news service, CWN notes that "Catholic Bishop Clemens Pickel told Forum18 that the denial of a new visa for Father Janusz Blaut in October 2004 — after the priest had served for 10 years in Russia — has left his Vladikavkaz parish without a priest. Father Blaut was the 8th Catholic cleric to be denied a visa in the past 10 years." Those clerics include Jerzy Mazur, the Bishop of Siberia (where most of Russia’s Catholics reside) and the secretary of the Russian Catholic Bishops Conference, among other key clerics.

        But — surprise, surprise — at the same time, "Lutheran Bishop Siegfried Springer and Protestant overseer Hugo Van Niekerk — both denied visas this summer — have once more been granted them." Yet Bishop Mazur "has never been allowed to return to his Irkutsk diocese; he has been replaced by Bishop Cyryl Klimowicz, a Belarusian native who does not require a visa to enter Russia. Denied entry in August 2002, a Slovakian Catholic priest, Father Stanislav Krajnak, reportedly received a visa in 2004 but was summoned back to the Russian embassy within hours for it to be cancelled."

        As I have noted in earlier columns, the "Practicing Christian" has a secret blacklist of Catholic clerics who are to be barred from Russian territory in a neo-Stalinist purge. And the Russian Orthodox Church, which is essentially an extension of the Kremlin, is working hand in glove with the "Practicing Christian" to see to it that the Catholic Church makes no inroads in Russia.

        Perhaps when Catholic clergy and laity are jailed by order of the "Practicing Christian", the dupes of Fatima revisionism will finally admit that Russia hasn’t been "converting" since 1984, after all, but has in fact been degenerating in every way. Don’t count on it, however. These people are very heavily invested in the lie they have been promoting for the past twenty-one years. But here at fatima.org, God willing, we are going to keep alive the memory of their betrayal in the hope that they will finally reverse course and do the right thing — for the Church and the world.