04/22/2022 Kazakhstan (International Christian Concern) – Bishops from Central Asian countries will be meeting next week at the first Bishops Conference of Central Asia. Bishops from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, as well as Afghanistan and Mongolia, will assemble from April 26-30 in Kazakhstan’s Capital, Nur-Sultan. The catholic communities in these former soviet nations are small. The conference hopes to bring unity to the modest Christian community in the region. The first order of business will be to elect a president of the conference to facilitate future joint endeavors.
The President of the Episcopal Conference of Kazakhstan explained to Agenzia Fides that the conference would be “the first step on a path of unity and brotherhood. We cherish much hope for the path we are about to undertake with the bishops and apostolic administrators of all these countries. The Lord asks us to broaden the ties of brotherhood, to be more Church with neighboring countries, and to bear witness. I think that the most beautiful thing about this new path is that we can be united even though we live in different countries with different governments and cultures. And this is possible because we have the same faith. We belong to the same Church.”
The Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples established the body last September. While each Central Asian nation is unique, they have the common dilemma of significant Muslim and Orthodox populations, as well as the poisonous vestiges of the former Soviet Union and its imposed atheism. The Vatican officials felt, in conjunction with the Central Asian Bishops, that a unified front would allow for more effective evangelizing and to support one another as they have more in common than not.
