Catacomb Church

The big, smiling young Russian opened the door and said, "Good day." The man in the partisan officer's uniform entered and went straight to the rickety table in the center of the room. Carefully following the agreed formula, he laid out the things he had brought--five potatoes here, a quarter-pound of tea in the center, a handful of raisins to the left. Then the visitor nervously repeated the words of the code: "Your friend Sasha asked me to pay you my respects and to thank you for your kindness to his mother." The Russian quickly gave the set reply of recognition and the two shook hands.

Thus a Roman Catholic priest made contact with a station of the underground within Russia. For six months after World War II, "Father George" traveled through the U.S.S.R. with Red army credentials, studying resistance to the Communist regime and especially the secret confederacy of Christians. What he found makes an exciting book, written in collaboration with magazine-writer Gretta Palmer and published this week as God's Underground (Appleton-Century-Crofts; $3).

When the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia, Father George was a Croatian organizer of Catholic youth groups. He promptly took off his clerical garb, went underground, and with many other young Christians, eventually joined Slovak partisans. Fighting side by side with Russians, they kept their religion under cover--celebrating Mass, and even holding retreats, in forests with lookouts posted.

The Way It Spreads. According to Father George, Russians are cynical about the sincerity of their government's war-inspired toleration of the Russian Orthodox Church. He reports that even some of the Orthodox priests stay underground just in case the state once again begins to close the churches.

Even registered Orthodox priests cannot hold classes in religion for children under 18. A nine-year-old boy showed Father George how children learned their catechism. "He held up his left hand, fingers outspread. T have five friends. I know my catechism from my comrade, who learned it from his grandmother. I have to teach it to my five friends . . . I give them an examination. Then if they pass, they become teachers. Each of them has to pass it on to five other friends. That's the way it spreads.' "

In one town Father George found a group who called themselves "postoffice Christians." Members send their wedding rings to be blessed by a Catholic priest and mailed back; in the same way they obtain consecrated earth to be sprinkled over graves, and holy water for baptisms.

The Russian resistance movement, says Father George, is made up of all sorts of men, among whom the Christians are highly respected. Said one of the leaders: "They are the bravest. They are the most cheerful. I wish I could share their secret."

Metaphysical Revolution. No one knows just how many secret priests are in Russia today. Lying ill last week in a monastery near Cologne was black-bearded bespectacled Father Kurt Szekalla, who, like Father George, successfully penetrated the Iron Curtain and got out again. But many are not so lucky. German-born Father Szekalla says he knows of seven fellow priests who entered Russia between 1939 and 1946, disguised as artisans or peasants. None has returned. At least one, a Czech priest named Father Romza, Szekalla knows to have been executed.

Father Szekalla reports that he found clandestine congregations of the Roman Catholic "catacomb church" almost, everywhere he went--even at high bureaucratic levels. In Leningrad, he says, one group customarily celebrated Mass within the Naval Academy while unsuspecting guards stood sentry duty outside. Father Szekalla is optimistic about Russia's eventual conversion: "I think that the revolution in Russia which began in the social order will end in the metaphysical order. The new resistance of the Russian people as .evidenced in their catacomb church will one day reassert itself . . . Religion will come back to Russia--but by evolution instead of revolution."

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