25 December 2018, 11:03
Catholics of Southern Russia and Transcaucasia celebrate Christmas
Russian Catholics are celebrating their Christmas. Festive masses are held in all Russian Catholic churches, including those in the Southern and North-Caucasian Federal Districts (SFD and NCFD) of Russia, and in the countries of Southern Caucasus.
The TASS has reported that from 800 thousand to a million Catholics live in Russia.
The oldest Catholic church in Russia is considered to be the Roman Catholic church, the parish of the Assumption of the Most Holy Mother of God in Astrakhan, built in 1762-1779, writes the "love-astrakhan.ru".
With the advent of Soviet power, the church was closed; it was returned to Catholics only in the 1990s. church was restored in 2008.
Armenians in the Samtskhe-Djavakheti Region have faced the deficit of priests.
The clergyman Anton Antonyan from the village of Eshtiya said that the Armenian Catholic Church, with the permission of the Vatican, enjoys somewhat more freedom than other Catholic churches of the world. "The Vatican allows us to celebrate Holy Christmas both on December 25 and January 6 (the date of Christmas in the Armenian Apostolic Church, – note of the "Caucasian Knot")," Mr Antonyan gave an example.
This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on December 25, 2018 at 06:06 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.
