February 20, 2009
Group heading to Vladivostok to see Father Myron Effing
Father Myron Effing talks with students at St. Joseph School, Vanderburgh County, during a visit to southern Indiana in fall of 2008. Father Effing, who hails from the parish, now serves in Vladivostok, Russia. Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
You can hear the excitement in Sharon Vogler’s voice as she talks about her upcoming trip to Vladivostok. She’s the DRE at St. Joseph Church in Vanderburgh County, and this July she and six others are heading to eastern Russia to see first hand the mighty work of parish son, Father Myron Effing.
He arrived in Vladivostok in 1992, with the responsibility of “re-establishing the Catholic Church in this region,” said his brother-in-law Paul Hasselbrinck, a parishioner at St. Joe who is also planning to go to Russia this summer.
Vogler said Paul is the “most versed local person” about Father Effing’s work. He’s also well versed on Russian history, particularly its impact on the Catholic Church there during the last 100 years.
“In the early part of the twentieth century, the Russian Far East boasted a thriving Roman Catholic population,” he said. “Many Russians, Poles, Lithuanians and other groups inhabited the area; they built schools, hospitals and beautiful churches. Then the Russian revolution swept into the region.
“After the revolution of 1917, the Russian Far East became a showplace of the new Communist era, a land without churches and without God. Under Stalin, all Catholic churches were confiscated and many were turned into the most degrading uses imaginable.
“Catholics were murdered by the thousands, and their bodies dumped into mass graves. Cemeteries were turned into amusement parks.”
Vladivostok is a seaport city of a million people located near Korea. In the early 1990s, when Father Effing first arrived, he was the first resident Roman Catholic clergyman there in 50 years.
He joined the community of the Crozier Fathers in 1964, but in Russia he and Father Dan Maurer established a new religious community known as the Canons Regular of Jesus the Lord in the Diocese of Novosibirsk.
Since Father Effing’s arrival in Russia, “he has established or re-established 11 Catholic parishes in an area covering more than a half million square miles,” Hasselbrinck said. “Now that the foundations have been laid, additional priests and sisters are joining the work, and parishes are growing and multiplying.”
Under his leadership several social programs were established, Hasselbrinck said. They include
- The Caritas Medical Program which provides free medical treatment for handicapped children and the elderly, and home nursing care for lonely and disabled elderly.
- The Caritas Social Program which provides orphans and poor needy people with clothes, footwear and food packs.
- The Caritas women support centers which render spiritual and material support to women with crisis pregnancies.
- The hospice care program which provides medical care to indigent aged people, needy pensioners and those poor who are suffering from terminal illness.
- The Adopt a Mom program which provides delivery medication packets of pain medications, antibiotics, sutures and cleansing preparation for mothers and babies.
- The Grandma (or Grandpa) mentoring program which provides someone to play and love orphans “because there aren’t enough to care for all of them,” Hasselbrinck said.
- The Omega Project which provide opportunities for university level students and faculty to be in contact with Catholic teaching about God, about family and life issues and about the social teaching of the Church, as well as providing social opportunities for students of the Catholic faith.
Vogler said the connection between St. Joseph Church and Father Effing began nine years ago when he made a visit to his home parish. “We had Sunday dinner and a gathering to support the mission and learn more of Father Myron’s work.”
Since March of 2008, “we have been able to give financial support to the mission and people in Vladivostok through our quarterly/fifth Sunday collection. Our financial support helps the people of Vladivostok in many ways.”
This past fall while he was in southern Indiana Father Effing talked with the children at St. Joseph School, “sharing his stories of life in Vladivostok.” And during Advent, many St. Joe parishioners participated in the “Live Simply So Others Can Simply Live” program.
“By using coupons, having peanut butter and jelly night, renting a movie instead of going to the circus, not buying soft drinks, eating at home, giving money to Russia instead of buying Christmas gifts for grandparents, saving loose change, and many other sacrifices, we have collected $1002 for the Kids2Kids program,” Vogler said.
In early July, she and six others are planning to visit Father Effing in Russia. “The idea is to find out about what is going on there, and then come back and share our pictures and our stories,” she said, adding, “I can’t wait!’”
The group includes St. Joseph parishioners, Kim Spaetti, Sam Moore, Chuck Brown, Donna Gaupel and Vogler. Benedictine Sister Leta Zeller, the pastoral associate at St. Francis Xavier Church, Poseyville, and St. Wendel Church, St. Wendel, is also planning to make the trip, as is Julie Deeg from Resurrection Church, Evansville.
Members of the Vladivostok Outreach Committee at St. Joseph include Marlene Hasselbrinck who is Father Effing’s sister, her husband, Paul, John Manger and Tom Folz.