Nun can't wait to return to Siberia

Sister Mary Katherine Malmros, SOLT, was far too energetic to tell her story sitting still.

"Ah!" she said when asked where she works, jumping up to grab a laminated map of Russia so she could point to the heart of Siberia, east of the Ural Mountains, where Most Holy Trinity parish in Kansk is located.

"Many Russians have Catholic roots -- a Polish grandmother, a German grandfather. For about one decade, it's been possible to live as a Catholic" in Siberia, she said. Before that, "there were no priests; there were no churches. Your faith would be expressed in a few prayers [a grandparent] passed down to you."

Russian experience

Sister Mary Katherine was sent to Siberia three years ago by her religious order, the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity. Her mission was to "make disciples of Jesus" by teaching Catholics about the faith it was once illegal to practice.

When she arrived in 2000 in the town of Krasnoyarsk, part of the Diocese of St. Joseph in Irkutsk, she was shocked at how poor the population was.

"More than anything, it's economic difficulties: rampant inflation, rampant unemployment," she said. "Making ends meet is difficult for many Russians; they tend to be caught up in how to feed themselves."

Fitting in

Sister Mary Katherine and a lay missionary, Mary Kloska, spent a year learning the language and getting to know Catholics from Presentation of the Lord parish.

"I'm still working on it," she said of her Cyrillic struggles. Russian, she added, is considered one of the three hardest languages commonly spoken, along with Chinese and Japanese.

When her spoken Russian became good enough, Sister Mary Katherine dove further into her work. She opened her apartment to local youth who needed a place to meet and to a Catholic 12-step group. She walked the streets to give spare change and holy cards to beggars, sparking conversations about faith. She held retreats and heavily promoted Natural Family Planning, using plastic models of unborn babies at different stages of gestation.

Religious ed

One of her biggest ministries is catechesis. Sister Mary Katherine displayed a photo of a group of Siberian Catholics with a priest, all gesturing slowly.

"They're learning the Sign of the Cross," she said, shaking her head at how little her parishioners know about their faith.

But she is also quick to defend them. Until a decade ago, she said, people had to close their blinds and quietly pass the word if a priest was going to celebrate Mass in a home.

Many parishioners still tell stories of grandparents who were condemned as "enemies of the people" for something as simple as owning a sewing machine (which supposedly made them rich), then sent away in cattle cars to work in the salt mines. Sister Mary Katherine is collecting such stories, hoping to write a book to highlight the desperate plight of Russians.

New location

After a few years of working in both Krasnoyarsk and Kansk, Sister Mary Katherine and her fellow missionary were transferred to the town of Kansk full-time. Her current parish, Most Holy Trinity, consists of about 20 people -- "30 or 40 on Christmas," she boasted. The tiny group is also served by a Filipino priest who joined them last year.

The missionaries intend to keep working to educate their parishioners in Catholic teachings. Sister Mary Katherine noted that Holy Saturday liturgy, which was held outdoors, drew a crowd of staring teenagers who wondered what the Paschal fire was.

"Russia is a country where it's easy to be baptized," she stated; "but there's a world of difference between being baptized and being a disciple of Jesus or having a personal relationship with the Lord."

(Sister Mary Katherine is interested in speaking at parishes and other locations during her sojourn in Schenectady. She can be reached at [email protected]. She returns to Russia in about two months.)

BIOGRAPHY

Journey of faith

Born in Schenectady to an Episcopalian family, Sister Mary Katherine Malmros became a Protestant and a Zen Buddhist in her early years, considered herself an atheist for a while, and then had what she called a "classic conversion experience" to Christianity while in graduate school at Columbia University. A couple of years after that, she became a Catholic.

While teaching in Missouri, she began to think about volunteering as a lay missionary. Simultaneously, she started praying the Rosary, a new experience for the fledgling Catholic.

One day, as she was flipping through a directory of groups that accepted lay volunteers, the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity caught her eye. Since she was interested in the Rosary, she liked the "Our Lady" in its title.

By the summer of 1985, she was headed to Belize with the order for a ten-month stint as a lay missionary -- and the stirrings of a religious vocation began.

"I don't want to give the impression it was a Cecil B. DeMille thing," she said. In fact, her vocation was inspired by a simple line of Scripture that made her path clear: "Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her" (Hosea 2:14).

She entered religious life the following year, and spent 14 years serving in Missouri and Texas. During that time, she met a priest who periodically traveled to Russia, so she was able to visit that country twice.

"Russia was in my blood from the time the plane landed," she recalled. "It's one of those irrational things."

When her order decided to send a few missionaries to Siberia, she was one of them. Today, she calls her assignment "a dream come true. I know that's my place."

The missionary is frustrated at having to spend just a couple of months back in the U.S. to renew her visa. Offering her interviewer a Russian chocolate bar, she remarked, "I want to go back!"

(5/22/03) [[In-content Ad]]