Page 33 - Michael Journal — 2019 October
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“Only now I understand                          the USSR, she said, “I had to leave for a while to real-
                                                                 When she returned to America after over a year in
                the wonderful grace                          ize, ‘Oh, my God, how wonderful it is.’”
                                                                 I don’t know the exact year that Svetlana met Fa-
                that the Sacraments                          ther Giovanni Garbolino who lived in the United States

                    of Penance and                           but had done missionary work in Russia but their re-
                                                             lationship would change her life. Svetlana received a
                  the Holy Eucharist                         letter from Fr. Garbolino inviting her to make a pilgrim-
                                                             age to Fátima. Then later, he visited her in Princeton,
                        produce...                           New Jersey. The two were in frequent contact. Fr. Gar-
                                                             bolino also gave Svetlana a cross that had been given
                 I feel very different                       to him by a Russian student whom he met during his
                                                             missionary travels. Later, Fr. Garbolino had given that
                  from before, since                         same cross to Col. Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin for his trip to
                                                             the moon.
            I attend Mass every day.”                            vetlana, with the guidance of Fr. Garbolino, read
                                                                 books by Catholic authors and on Dec. 13, 1982,
                                                             Sshe  converted  to  the  Catholic  faith.  Svetlana
     u  agree to this condition; she could not. “To remain si-  wrote about her conversion: “Only now I understand
        lent for another 40 years could have been achieved   the wonderful grace that the Sacraments of Penance
        just as well in the U.S.S.R.”,                       and the Holy Eucharist produce, no matter what day of
        she wrote.                                           the year, and even on a daily basis. Before, I was un-
            In April 1967,  Svet-                            willing to forgive and repent, and I was never able to
        lana  Alliluyeva landed at                           love my enemies. But I feel very different from before,
        Kennedy  Airport  in  New                            since I attend Mass every day”.
        York carrying a  manu-                                   She added, “The Eucharist has given me life. The
        script  that  would  never                           Sacrament of Penance with God whom… we abandon
        have  been published in                              and betray each day; the sense of guilt and sadness
        the  USSR.  It  was  titled                          that invades us then, all this makes it necessary to re-
        Twenty Letters to a Friend                           ceive it frequently.”
        and  was  about  her  life  in                           This woman, who grew up essentially motherless,
        the Soviet Union. It was a                           wrote, “I was taken into the arms of the Blessed Vir-
        huge success and a best-                             gin  Mary... Who  else could be my advocate but  the
        seller.  Just  two  years  later  she                Mother of Jesus? She suddenly drew me close to her.”
        wrote  another  bestseller  about                        She traveled to Europe and back to America often
        her life since her defection titled                  and then moved to be near one of her daughters in
        Only One Year.                                       Oregon. In the end, she did not die raising her fist in
            She was famous but her personal life was still a   anger at the world as her father had done but peace-
        wreck.  Switching  from  religion  to  religion  and  once   fully in a Wisconsin nursing home in 2011, where she
        again marrying, having a child, divorcing, and moving   enjoyed sewing and reading and surely praying. v
        often,  she  found  herself  disenchanted  with  America   © 2019 EWTN News, Inc. Reprinted from the National Catholic Reg-
        and wanted to return home. In fact, she did return to   ister,  08/28/2019:  http://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthew-arch-
        the Soviet Union but almost instantly regretted it.  bold/the-stalin-who-converted-to-catholicism


                  The Prayers of “Babushka”, her Grandmother


                he importance of grandparents in one’s life cannot be underestimated. In her
                autobiography, Twenty Letters to a Friend, Svetlana Stalina, the only daughter of
           TSoviet dictator Joseph Stalin related “…We had been educated by atheistic par-
           ents, by a secularized school, by our entire deeply materialistic society. There was no talk
           of God …However those first 36 years in the atheist state of Russia were not completely
           lived without God… my paternal grandmother, Ekaterina Djugashvili, an almost illiterate
           peasant, …nurtured trust in God and in the Church. Very pious and hardworking, she
           dreamed of making her surviving son—my father—a priest”.
               This desire, of course, never did materialize, but Grandmother Ekaterina did plant
           the seed of faith in her granddaughter, who years later embraced Catholicism.


        42     MICHAEL  October/November/December 2019                                  www.michaeljournal.org
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