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Azerbaijan – Extraordinary Visitation by the Councillor for North Europe

Azerbaijan – A new Superior for the Salesian mission

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Documents on display bore witness to the difficult and long struggle of the Catholics in Baku to have their own church. Over 50 years of reports, requests, and correspondence with the local authorities and those of Tsarist Russia. One church built in the years  1909-1912 was destroyed 1931 together with other churches and mosques on the orders of Stalin.

For many years, as other documents show, the Catholics in Baku used for Mass a “house of prayer” a simple building, which during the communist regime was then  taken over and used as a cinema. On the basis of the documents discovered, the Catholic community hopes to recover the building and use it for religious  and pastoral purposes.

The Catholic Delegation joined for the inter-religious summit and represented by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue met the Christian community of Baku in the church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the only Catholic church in the city which together with the Catholic Community in Baku is entrusted to the Salesians.

Fr Vladimir Fekete SDB the Superior of the “Missio Sui Iuris” of Azerbaijan, opened the exhibition and thanked the representatives of the Historical Institute.

Published 07/05/2010