Belarus has significantly lower wages compared to Western European countries. Most people can’t afford traveling or dining out at restaurants. But Asya Poplavskaya was an exception. The young woman had a well-paying job and gained considerable popularity as a journalist. Her religion was ambition and success, and she didn’t know how to live differently. 

But then she encountered Christ in the course of her career. 

“I decided to start a travel blog about Belarusian sacred architecture. But when priests were giving tours, I realized that I understood only 30% of what they were saying. So I began to deepen my knowledge of the Catholic faith to make my articles richer in content and attract a new audience,” the 37-year-old  Belarusian told the Register.

Now the blogger is convinced that God was just waiting for the perfect time to sweep her up in the whirlwind of his love. And that moment came. Along with her travel blog, Poplavskaya was managing another project called “Wednesday With an Interesting Person.” Since she had already begun to explore religious contexts, she came up with the idea to spend a day with a priest. 

“I was pretty sure it would be shock[ing] content for my followers,” the young woman admitted.

It was Ash Wednesday.  Poplavskaya spent the whole day with a  young Catholic priest, Father Kirill Bardonov, from a small town. She was about to finish gathering material when the preacher insisted that it was impossible to create content about a Catholic pastor without attending Holy Mass. 

And the journalist was shocked by her experience — in a good way.

“I was so impressed by the number of cool, young people in the church. I was also surprised by the homily, where the priest emphasized the importance of evangelization through the internet. From my perspective, the church had been a place for a few elderly women and had nothing to do with technology,” Poplavskaya explained.

During the Our Father prayer, the parishioners joined hands and began to sing. Poplavskaya didn’t know the words, but she took the hands of the people nearby. Unexpectedly, she became very emotional and started to cry. 

“I couldn’t explain that reaction. But from that moment, I was certain that my life was going to change,” she recalled. 

Poplavskaya began attending individual catechesis classes led by a Dominican nun, Sister Anna Aneychyk, over the course of one year at St. Roch Church in Minsk. 

Driven by spiritual hunger, Poplavskaya moved forward with lightning speed. Instead of hanging out at bars on Fridays, she was walking the Way of the Cross. She began attending Holy Mass more often and preparing for general confession.

That period was intense not only spiritually but also in her personal life, as she was about to get married. “We also planned to move to the U.S. afterward,” Poplavskaya said. 

Her fiancé was a stranger to the changes taking place in Poplavskaya’s heart. Instead of trying to persuade her fiancé, she canceled the wedding.

“Shortly after that, I received the Eucharist for the first time in my life. From that moment, I realized that I couldn’t live without Christ. I felt that this was the very love I had been searching for my whole life,” she explained.

“Many people naturally fell away from my life,” she also recalled.

After setbacks pursuing religious life, her journey took a new turn — though a long break in her journalistic career made it difficult to find a position in this field again.

“Internally, I had already resigned myself to taking physical work: I started looking at vacancies for cleaners and waitresses. And at that moment, the Lord gave me something much better,” she said.

Representatives of the largest Catholic festival in Poland, Lednica 2000, contacted Poplavskaya and offered her a job leading the festival’s media department. The importance of this festival is recognized even by the pope, who annually sends a special message to the participants.

“I’m happy,” Poplavskaya emphasized. “God’s perspective doesn’t mean that everything will be easy — only that the Lord uses our trials for further personal and spiritual growth. Now, I see what a difficult, but still beautiful, path Christ continues to lead me on.”

Anhelina Martsisheuskaya collaborates with EWTN’s Vatican Bureau. Originally from Belarus, she has 10 years of experience writing for Catholic publications.