[Catholic Culture] In an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, the General Secretary of the Bishops' Conference of Kazakhstan recounted the persecution Catholics endured in the Soviet Union under the regime of Leonid Brezhnev. Between 1971 and 1973, when he was a child of ten to twelve, Bishop Athansius Schneider and his family would travel by train to the nearest church, which was 60 miles away.
“The Communist government forbade children from participating in the Holy Mass,” he recalls. “Only adults were allowed to go, but we were four children and therefore my parents chose to take the first train in the morning when it was still dark so we wouldn’t be visible to others to see us… And then we would return with the last train in the evening …The Sundays, we spent with our parish priest who had a little room only-- not a house, but just a little room; it was his kitchen, sleeping room, and library in this one room. We spent our time because we were the family who travelled from afar. There I made my first Confession and first Communion with this holy priest who was also imprisoned in Karaganda earlier.”
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