MORE than 200 people packed in to St Mary’s Church, Warrington, recently for the visit of Bishop Athanasius Schneider from Kazakhstan.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider
The Bishop was visiting Warrington to give a series of talks and to celebrate Mass at the church in Buttermarket Street.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider was born in Tokmok, Kirghiz SSR in the Soviet Union. His parents were ethnic Germans from Ukraine who were sent by Stalin to gulags after the Second World War. They traveled to the Kirghiz SSR after being released from the camps.
In 1973, shortly after making his first Holy Communion by the hand of Bl. Oleksa Zaryckyj, priest and martyr, he left with his family for Germany.
He joined the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra, a Catholic religious order, and was ordained a priest in 1990, earning a doctorate in Patristics.
In June 2006 he was consecrated Bishop at the Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter in the Vatican by Angelo Cardinal Sodano and in 2011 was transferred to the position of auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Astana.
He is the Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of Kazakhstan.
In Karaganda, formerly the centre of Sovietic atheistic persecution, he managed to build a superb landmark Catholic cathedral.
