Lithuania, land of the unquenchable wick
Broun, Janice
O Lithuania, land of the unquenchable wick ne area of the USSR which does not seem likely to benefit from glasnost is Lithuania, even though 1987 is the six-hundredth anniversary of the...
...But a detailed analysis is revealing: Vladas Lapienis is eighty...
...The basic appeals made year after year through bishops, clergy, laity, and the Chronicle remain unfulfilled, and the events of the recent past are hardly likely to inspire hope or confidence in the government...
...Nothing has altered recently...
...One, Father Jonas Matulionis, is currently in hospital...
...State violations are countered by petitions signed by thousands...
...The pope is still keen oa making a visit to Lithuania and insists that visiting Lithuania would be a prerequisite for his presence in the USSR next year celebrating the millennium of Christianity there...
...Klaipeda, a coastal town of two-hundred-thousand, has only a tiny church to serve them...
...children are given religious instruction...
...The Lithuanian Catholic church is a perpetual headache to the Soviet authorities...
...in prison since 1975, was broken and wrote a denunciation of fellow prisoners...
...Preiska and the other bishops were warned that if they continued these "impossible demands, together with the extremists," the Commission would be dissolved, local celebrations forbidden, and the Bibles .promised for this year might not appear (last printing: twelve-thousand copies in 1972...
...A group appeal for the reinstatement of Archbishop S(cpoiid\ k'ius w as turned dow n in March...
...Casimir's, Vilnius (a museum of atheism), and the Queen of Peace Church, Klaipeda (a concert hall since its erection in 1960...
...It is the only recognized religious body where a large majority of the clergy, with almost total lay support, systematically demands that the state abide by its own constitution and its international obligations...
...The founder of the Lithuanian Helsinki Monitoring Group, Viktoras Petkus, was sentenced to fifteen years in 1978...
...Antanas Teriec had served seven of his eight years...
...In 1986 Aniliqnis accused the hierarchy of not responding to concessions (help in restoring some of churches, and 500,000 anniversary picture cards): repeatedly ignoring the activities of "'extremist" clergy (who constitute a large majority...
...2.400 "underground" nuns arc active "in the world...
...the government's Commissioner for Religious Affairs, and the church are at alow ebb...
...and in the absence of permission for a church paper, the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church is now in its fifteenth year of secret printing, being smuggled to the West and being broadcast back into Lithuania by Radio Vatican, with a wealth of detail unprecedented in the Soviet Union...
...Catholics defiantly declared the Ian week of May this year as a time of prayer for these determined prisoners...
...Out of forty Lithuanian religious prisoners, nine were released this year...
...But in July, Teas repotted that Queen of Peace Church would be transferred to believers sometime in the next two years...
...Vytautas Skuodis, the first lay member of the Catholic Committee and in exile for seven of the last twelve years, and Doctor Algirdas Statkevicius, in psychiatric hospital since 1980, are both American citizens...
...Henrikas Jaskunas...
...have signed protests...
...J.B...
...Between 1983 and 1986, 359 out of 693 priests, and even two bishops...
...All bishops and clergy were kept in strict ' 'quarantine" and not allowed to travel to Rome, although in fact Bishop Uudas Povilionis was allowed to go in February, possibly as a result of Western publicity on the ban...
...Algirdas Patackas had not yet been tried...
...Relations between Petras Anilionts...
...Fathers Alfonsas Svarinskas and Sigitas Tamkevkius, active members of the Catholic Committee serving ten-year sentences, refused to sign recantations and were returned to camp...
...A papal visit in the anniversary year was of course ' quashed, and Lithuania made a "no-go" area for ranking clergy and official outside groups wanting to join the celebrations...
...Balys Gajauskas, who had already served a twenty-five-year sentence (he was resentenced in 1977 to fifteen years for disbursing aid to prisoners and translating Solzhenitsyn's Guktg Archipelago into Lithuanian) remains in prison...
...Jaduyga Bielauskiene was a Barashevo inmate, due to start her exile...
...O Lithuania, land of the unquenchable wick ne area of the USSR which does not seem likely to benefit from glasnost is Lithuania, even though 1987 is the six-hundredth anniversary of the conversion of the nation, and the celebrations have been officially countenanced...
...He has also refused to recant...
...So there is little sign ol change in the religious scene in Lithuania...
...If violations are protested against, restrictions are actively countered...
...None of the three priests in prison was released...
...Good men refused entry to the seminary are secretly trained and ordained...
...Lithuanians may have been the last European people to be convened to Christianity, but their tenacity and resourcefulness in maintaining their faith and their national identity put many larger nations to shame, in spite of genocide when the Soviets took over, and unremitting pressure since, 66 percent of the nation (85 percent in 1940) is still Catholic...
...and failing to disqipline them when, for instance, they illegally held services outside their parishes, led pilgrimages, or preached "politi. cal" sermons (they had done nothing to prevent former prisoners like Niole Sadunaite or the late Petras Paulitis from preaching...
...Juiijonas Steponavicius (believed to be a secret cardinal) and Vigcentas Sladkevicius (exiled, but reinstated in 1982...
...Some tough bargaining is in prospect...
...a head of the official commission for the six-Hundredth anniversary celebrations, he had demanded that the occasion should be marked by the return of Vilnius Cathedral (now an art gallery), St...
...The main object of Anilionis's wrath, however, was a relatively new member of the hierarchy Juozas Preiska...
...In February 1986, Father Juozas Zdebskis, a member of the unofficial Catholic Committee for the Defense of Believers* Rights, was killed in the last of several car "accidents.'' There is no sign of the release of imprisoned priests, nor of the reinstatement from his internal exile (since 1961) of Archbishop Steponavicius...
Vol. 114 • October 1987 • No. 18
