The Ukraine
After the 1978 Christmas holidays, certain Western press correspondents rushed to report that this year's Christmas holidays in the Soviet Union had passed in a peaceful and orderly fashion, as never before since the war. There were no Communist Youths at the churches to disrupt services, there were no teachers to chase children from churches, etc. This was supposedly true of Moscow, Kiev, Vilnius. In this same vain, others went even further by reporting that the relationship between the government and religion and the Church is supposedly normalizing in the Soviet Union. These correspondents did not know what was happening in the more remote places they have never visited and with whose inhabitants they have had no contact whatsoever.
In the district of the Western Ukraine, where the majority of the population consists of Catholic Ukrainians, the situation is quite different. It must be pointed out that Soviet organs follow in the footsteps of Czarist administrators in never calling a Ukrainian Catholic, but just Uniate in order to debase him as a schismatic of the Russian Orthodox Church who has sided with the Catholic Church. The people of the Ukraine, especially the Western portion, have been Catholic since ancient times, but of the Eastern rite: this was and still is equally intolerable to both Czarist and present-day Russia. If a Ukrainian calls himself Catholic, he is assail-led: "You are not Catholic, but Uniate in other words, you have broken away from Mother Russia and now spread discord between the people of Russia and the Ukraine. Just before Christmas, a commission from Kiev and Moscow arrived in Western Ukraine and began to summon the remaining old and ailing Ukrainian Catholic Priests. Those who could not come in person were visited at home and were subjected to exhausting talks. The purpose of these talks was to terrorize the priests so they will not have the courage to conduct services when they go visiting or receive the faithful in their homes to attend services. These priests, most of whom were prosecuted several times simply for refusing to be Russian Orthodox, have already been robbed of everything. Already in 1946, during the "first blow" as the security police has dubbed it, when all Ukrainian Catholic bishops and priests were herded together and sent to concentration camps, their church articles and religious literature were stolen. Then, during the "second blow" in 1957, those priests who returned home after the 1953 amnesty were denuded of everything, even ordinary dishes and boxes were taken on the suspicion that they might be used for Holy Mass. After the "second blow" (it was to be the last) few Ukrainian Catholic priests were left. And these were elderly, ailing and broken by torture in labor camps. Now they once again have no peace. The Chekists mock them: "You will have no peace even in death; we will watch who attended your funeral, what is written on your tombstone, etc. A Catholic priest will die somewhere, his friends will bury him and then they will be interrogated, threatened and harrassed in various ways . . ." People who attend services at the home of a Catholic priest are often detained by Government representatives, are dismissed from work, etc. It should be known that every Ukrainian Catholic priest is followed by a whole band of security police collaborators. He can be taken off a bus or train at any time and searched without any reason. The visiting commission warned: "Your Uniate Church is not legal—go pray in the Orthodox churches." To the question of why they don't register the Ukrainian Catholics, as they do other Catholics, they replied: "You are not Catholics; you are Uniates". The priests of the Ukraine complain: "Vatican representatives visited Moscow but did they ever submit the demand of Ukrainian Catholics to Moscow authorities? Five million Ukrainian Catholics still know nothing of this."
Biržai
Monsignor Adolfas Sabaliauskas, a well-known writer (pen-name Žalia Rūta), and great collector of folklore, folk art and musical instruments, erected a beautiful Lithuanian-style chapel near his birthplace in the tiny cemetery of Mielaišiai in the Rayon of Biržai and asked his relatives to bury him there.
People from the surrounding area used the chapel: They held wakes for their dead through the night and the following day buried the decedent in the cemetery after the priest conducted services.
But later under the Soviet government, the chairman of the Geidžiūnai District confiscated the keys to the chapel and forbade people to pray there. According to local residents, the chairman intends to convert the chapel into a grain warehouse.
After Msgr. Sabaliauskas died in 1950, his friends took his remains to the chapel in accordance with his wishes, but when they could not find the key they cut a hole in the outside wall under the altar, inserted the casket and closed it up again.
Aušra (The Dawn) No. 14 (54). The issue is dated December 1978. It contains a statement by Lithuanian Helsinki Group member Rev. Karolis Garuckas, an article entitled "Trading in Nations", etc. The news section contains items on the Catholic Committee for the defense of the Rights of Believers, stepped-up russification in Lithuania, etc.
Dievas ir Tėvynė (God and Country) No. 10. Half of this issue is devoted to the poem "Night Visitor" signed with the pen name Bičiulis (Friend), the remaining portion contains three articles: "Aren't You Ashamed!", "All Lithuanians for the Nation's Purity" and "The Summit of Humanity." The issue appeared in February 1979.
Tiesos kelias (Way of Truth) No. 11. This issue writes about Pope John Paul II, the International Year of the Child, the defense of children's rights; much information is presented on the life of the Catholic Church.
Fellow Lithuanians, Don't Forget!
P.(etras) Plumpa, N.(ijolė) Sadūnaitė, S.(ergei) Kovalev, V.(la-das) Lapienis, B.(alys) Gajauskas, V.(iktoras) Petkus and others who bear the shackles of prison to that you might freely live and believe!