First ordination of a presbyter for the archbishop who’s been leading the diocese of Moscow since last autumn: Italian Msgr. Paolo Pezzi. On Saturday 24th May, in Saint Petersburg, in the Catholic Church of Assumption, Msgr. Pezzi is ordaining Deacon Nikolaj Vojtechoviè, 31 years old, with Byelorussian origins. Baptized in his home town, Ivje, in 1989, and confirmed in Czêstochowa ten years later, the future priest attended the seminar «Mary Queen of the Apostles» in Saint Petersburg. In 2007, for his bachelor’s degree, he submitted a dissertation on the Eucharist as origin of mercy in the spirituality of Saint Faustina Kowalska. The seminar of Saint Petersburg is the only Catholic seminar all over Russia. It was opened on 29th June 1993 in Moscow and later on moved to San Petersburg, to the building of the Catholic seminar (depending on the metropolitan see of Mogilev) closed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Today, it is attended by 19 aspiring priests and 12 friars. In Russia, from 1996 to present days, 28 seminarians were ordained priests. The current rector is Msgr. Paolo Pezzi himself. On 29th June, in Tomsk (South Western Siberia), another seminarian is going to be ordained: Deacon Vasilij Zazdravnych.

News by SIR