The Minor Basilica of St. Joseph in Karaganda, Kazakhstan The Vatican has named a church in Kazakhstan as the first minor basilica in Central Asia.
The Minor Basilica of St Joseph in Karaganda was built at the request of persecuted Catholics who had been exiled to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic by the Soviet Union.
“Our beautiful church was built 40 years ago. At that time, the Catholic people had already been deported to Kazakhstan by the Soviet Union. It was atheism, and the priests stayed in the prison and in the camps,” Fr Evgeniy Zinkovskiy, vicar general of the Diocese of Karaganda, told CNA.
Fr Vladimir Dzurenda, the current rector of the Minor Basilica of St Joseph, told CNA that the cathedral had become a “symbol of the revival of Catholics both in the period of the Soviet Union and in modern Kazakhstan”.
“The parish of St Joseph was one of the few churches that was allowed to be built in the 70s in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Union,” he added.