The return of "spring"” “

Belarus: a Central European country that wants to grow and yet still suffers from the “allure” of the former Soviet Union: such is the image of the independent state formerly known as Belorussia; the name means “White Russia”. Belarus is the heir of the long tradition of Mitteleuropa, from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the splendours of the Tsarist Empire, right down to the end of the power of the USSR which incorporated and colonized the whole region. More particularly, in the Soviet era, the country was colonized ‘in toto’ by Muscovite bureaucrats, who controlled all the levers of local power, either ousting the Belorussians themselves or relegating them to menial tasks. Today that’s no longer the case. The country – with the disappearance of the former USSR – gained its complete independence. Despite that, the tendencies to reunification with Moscow are strong: in 1999 a treaty was signed by president Lukashenko and the then Russian president Yeltsin establishing a monetary, fiscal, banking and customs union between the two countries. If all goes as planned, the Belarussian ruble will disappear on 1st July 2003, and be replaced by the Russian ruble. The World Bank has warned that this is an error, due to the enormous disparity between the two countries (10 million inhabitants in Belarus, almost 150 million in the Russian Federation). And then there’s Chernobyl and the continuing radioactive contamination, with hundreds of thousands of victims and an entire farming area “dead”. This is the Belarus of today, notorious for its nuclear power station, symbol of every man-made disaster, and tragic for its thousands of contaminated children and adolescents who are welcomed as guests in the countries of Western Europe for periods of vacation and recuperation. Within this overall picture, the Catholic Church has begun to take its first steps. Of the country’s 10 million inhabitants, just over 10% are officially Catholics; in actual fact it seems that practising Catholics are closer to 20%, vying in number with practising Orthodox, though in the official statistics these latter are estimated as over 30% of the population. In his recent meeting with the Pope in the Vatican, Cardinal Kazimierz Swiatek, metropolitan of Minsk and Mohilev, recalled some significant data of the reborn local Catholic Church: 4 dioceses, 400 parishes, 360 priests of whom 160 of Belarussian origin, 100 newly ordained priests, 160 foreign male religious, 350 women religious (of whom 140 Belarussians), 150 seminarians in the two seminaries of Grodno and Pinsk. The times “of the forced closure of places of Christian formation, and of the violent persecution protracted for several decades” are over, said John Paul II, on receiving the bishops on their “ad limina” visit. But if today we can speak of a new “springtime of ecclesial life” in Belarus, the problems are not lacking: the crisis of the family, urbanization (70% of the population live in the cities), growing poverty (the country is in 53rd place in terms of the index of human development, with per capita GDP of 2620 dollars). Privatization is going ahead at a snail’s pace, agriculture has been decimated by the Chernobyl explosion, the social services are slow in developing. “It’s a country that wants to grow – says archimandrite Sergio Gajek, vicar apostolic for Greek-Catholics in Belarus – but that needs to overcome many difficulties, not least the temptation to let itself be swallowed up by Russia once again”. The Catholic Church is doing its best to support and enhance the national identity and cultural tradition: “We preach in the local language – adds Father Gajek – and only rarely in Russian, unlike what happens in the Orthodox churches where the rites are still celebrated in Old Slav”. Among the tools for the proclamation of the Gospel, the Belarussian Church has in recent years been dedicated to translating sacred texts, and especially the Roman missal, into the national language. Meanwhile the Pope has encouraged ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox Church: “Many families – he noted – are confessionally mixed”.