Msgr. R. George Sarauskas has been helping to restore Christian life in Eastern Europe for more than a decade.

He spoke to Register correspondent John Romanowsky about his firsthand witness to the places where the faith suffered the worst persecution in history.

What have the past 13 years of helping rebuild the Church in Central and Eastern Europe meant to you?

American Catholics who grew up in the 1950s remember how, after every Sunday Mass, we prayed three Hail Marys, the Memorare and the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel for the conversion of Russia. I can't think of a greater example of prayers being answered. It took many years, but they were answered. Soviet communism did fall.

But it means even more to me and my family. My parents are from Lithuania. Toward the end of World War II, the eastern front was moving in and this time the Russians were coming. Typically, when the Russians came in, most civil servants of middle grade or higher were shipped off to Siberia. My parents were civil servants, so they decided to leave.

One night, as the Russians were actually moving into Vilnius, there was a military train leaving for Poland. Hoping to catch it, they ran into a young guard by the train who was a Soviet soldier but also a Latvian. My parents had very few things — one suitcase, some food. They asked if they could get on, but he refused. My mother offered him some English cigarettes and food. He was so cold and hungry that he accepted and let them on. They literally hid under a Soviet army tank as they left the country.

They moved around Europe until finally ending up in a refugee camp in Germany, which is where I was born. The war ended soon after my birth and for the next five years we lived in a refugee camp.

The Church helped us a lot in the camp, which was near Eichstatt, Germany. There were priests from Eastern Europe who were educated, many of whom spoke foreign languages and who helped with documentation and locating sponsors in other countries. I'll always be grateful to them.

So establishing and directing this office was a chance for you to express your gratitude in a concrete way.

Yes, although in some ways it wasn't a new thing altogether because most of us who are from Eastern Europe still have family over there and were always doing whatever we could to support them. In Chicago we established a national base for those countries that were oppressed. We'd go to each other's parades, prayers and rallies. Most people from that part of the world were involved. My father's first check was $17 when we came to this country and $6 of that went to his sister in Lithuania. There's nothing unique about that story. It's what everyone was doing.

For the Catholic Church in the United States to officially get involved was a great step forward because it brought the prestige of the American Church and the generosity of the American people into play. Not only were there individual efforts going on — those had been going on for years — but now there was a comprehensive effort, which is what really made it important.

But amid the euphoria of the Church's newfound freedom, you must have seen the effects of decades of Soviet oppression. Which effects struck you the most?

The most dramatic and graphic was the fate of the churches. Many of them were torn down, in ruins, vandalized, their windows smashed; others were closed or used as warehouses or museums. One beautiful church in Vilnius was used as a museum of “atheistic culture.” The cathedral was an art gallery.

But even more devastating was the Soviet mentality: No one trusted anyone. I had pleasant, polite conversations, but I would realize later on that nothing really got said. I thought to myself, “Everyone was role playing.” That kind of psychological paralysis was not as dramatic as a ruined church, but it permeated their society. Lying was a way of survival. It was difficult to gain people's trust.

Would you say then that there has been steady growth in the Catholic Church in Eastern Europe since those countries began to enjoy freedom of religion?

There has been growth, but it is not steady or in any way inevitable. In America, it is easy for us to forget what is still happening over there. We see a problem one day, then the next day it's off the front page and we think it's all gone. It would be a mistake to think that either the Church's freedom is assured or that all the human, political and religious rights of the people are fully guaranteed.

In some ways, the governments still harass the Catholic Church. One of the clearest examples is in the case of visas. The Church in the former Soviet Union still relies on missionaries from countries like Poland or Slovakia because they don't have enough native clergy. Some of these governments are very restrictive on the visas for religious workers. Governments either deny such people or grant them short-term visas and require them to return to their own country to have it renewed, sometimes every two months. This is not only expensive but it's also very inconvenient and a form of administrative harassment.

In Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, bishops in the Catholic Church told us very clearly that they know their phones are still tapped, conversations are still listened to and there are various kinds of bugging devices.

What do you see for the future for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe?

Theologically I'm optimistic because the Church is the work of the Holy Spirit who protects it, even though it may go through some hard times. But some of these governmental or interreligious issues are not going to go away easily and will take a long time to work through. Human jealousy and human competition are with us all the time and aren't going to go away.

The long-term future of the Church is a good one. The short-term future is difficult because they have to face all the modern problems, and local churches are not yet up and running as we are in the United States. They don't have all the resources, structures and communications. They are all working very hard, but there's so much to be done. Their interactions with their governments, many of which are an assembly of the same faces that were there during communism, are tense and hostile. When they speak out on public policy issues such as abortion or marriage, they still have many battles to fight.

John Romanowsky writes from Washington, D.C.