By Gerald Korson
Voice correspondent

It took Father John Gibbons a while to adapt to the culture of the people at his mission parish in Siberia, that vast region of northeast Asia once known as a place of exile for the political dissidents of the Soviet Union.

While serving as pastor to about 50 Catholics in Arceniev, a town of some 60,000 people in far eastern Russia, Father Gibbons lived in this friary and a small church next to it.

Infants are sometimes left bundled up outside on sub-zero winter days, a common Siberian practice that is supposed to give the baby a hardy constitution. Cars travel on the right-hand side of the road, but nearly all the vehicles are used models from Japan, where the steering wheel is on the right. And when the Franciscan priest sought relief from a sore throat, one parishioner sagely advised him to “drink kerosene — but not too much.”

The biggest cultural shock, however, was simply in dealing with the Russian government’s meddlesome bureaucracy, which partly is what brought him to spend this summer ministering at St. Elizabeth Parish in Oakland: A new law stipulates that a foreigner with a one-year visa can reside in the country only six months out of that year. So Father Gibbons stayed at the Franciscan provincial house adjacent to the parish until he could return to Russia.

A native of Portland, Ore., Father Gibbons said he always wanted to be a missionary.

“Ever since I joined the Franciscans 20 years ago, I’ve always wanted to do mission work,” Father Gibbons told The Voice. “I’ve always enjoyed being with other cultures.”

The 45-year-old graduate of Berkeley’s Franciscan School of Theology has spent the bulk of his last five years in the Russian Federation province of Premorskiy Krai, serving most recently as pastor of a small Catholic congregation before taking on a new job last spring as formation director for the Franciscan community in St. Petersburg in Russia.

Although he had not previously considered working in Russia specifically, the opportunity came about after he and a fellow Franciscan, Father David Gaa, discussed their mutual desire to serve in foreign missions while both were working on the Tonono O’odom Indian Reservation in Tucson, Arizona.

While the two strategized on how to approach their Franciscan superiors, Father Gaa raised a suggestion: “Why don’t we trust the Holy Spirit and the needs of our Franciscan brothers more and just say that we’ll serve in the place where the need is greatest?”

With permission from the Santa Barbara Province and the Franciscan mission office in Rome, Father Gaa found a missionary role in Kazakhstan, a largely Muslim nation that borders Russia. That’s not to suggest that the two priests were in relatively close proximity to one another, however. In reality, more than 3,000 miles and seven time zones separate Kazakhstan from Premorskiy Krai, an east Siberian outpost on the Sea of Japan. (Premorskiy Krai literally means “on the edge of the sea.”)

Father Gibbons spent his first two years there in Ussuriysk, studying Russian at an institute that had language programs for foreigners. Because he had only a student visa, however, he was not allowed to do any priestly ministry during that time. So by the time he became sufficiently comfortable with conversational Russian, he was eager and ready to begin his work among the people.

He was named pastor of Arceniev, a town of some 60,000 people about 100 miles from Ussuriysk. The community there had been without a resident priest for many years and was still feeling the effects of decades of religious persecution under Communist rule. Yet a loyal remnant remained, kept alive in the Catholic faith through the oral traditions passed on by devout grandmothers and elders.

In a land where only a fraction of a percent of the population is Catholic, Father Gibbons had just 50 regular parishioners — all ethnic Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, East Germans and Slavs, most of them the sons, daughters and elderly of those who once had been forcibly relocated there.

“Those are the people who are traditionally Catholic,” said Father Gibbons. “Our job is not to do evangelization in the traditional sense, but to find the people of Catholic heritage.”

What Father Gibbons found was that the Catholics in the area who had clung to their faith were very poorly catechized. “Very few of them knew much more than the fact that they are Catholic and a few traditional prayers,” he said.

So he did the reasonable thing: He directed an RCIA program for the entire parish.
“They enjoyed it,” Father Gibbons said of his parishioners. “It was really worthwhile.”
Ecumenical sensitivity with regard to the Russian Orthodox Church, which also suffered mightily under communism, means he must especially be careful not to approach members of the Orthodox faithful.

“I can reach out to people who are of Catholic heritage, who simply have lost touch with their faith,” said Father Gibbons. “But I can’t go and evangelize Orthodox or other people.”

When he first arrived in Arciniev, it took some time to gain the people’s trust, Father Gibbons said. Before his first year was over, however, they soon came to accept him fully, inviting him to birthday celebrations and stopping by to use his cell phone at all hours of the day. “Now it’s just like family,” he said.

Once that happened, he felt he could really tailor his ministry to the needs of his parishioners.

“I’ve done a lot of listening,” he said. “I had to take people where they were at. I have to take into account their culture. I’m not going to teach a Russian the same way I’d teach an American. It’s a matter of finding out what cultural values, which stories are important to them.”

With the help of local Catholics and generous donors back home, Father Gibbons constructed a new place of worship in Arciniev and called it the Church of the Annunciation.

But now he has left the town and the people he came to love in pursuit of a larger goal: To help build a native Russian priesthood sufficient to bring the sacraments to Catholic communities all across the Federation.

Today, there are just 14 Franciscans in all of Russia. The good news is that the three seminarians presently in formation at St. Petersburg are all native Russians, said Father Gibbons.

Although the oppression of communism is gone and the Catholic faithful are more free to worship now, the project to restore the Catholic presence in Russia is still in its infancy.

“People in my parents’ generation were raised praying for the conversion of Russia,” said Father Gibbons. “Well, now we’ve got a toe in the door — but don’t stop praying yet.”

(Editor’s note: To support the Franciscan mission in Russia, contributions can be sent to: Franciscan Missions, Father John Gibbons/Russia, 1112 – 26th St., Sacramento, CA 95816.)

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