His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider has been referred to in the National Catholic Register as “one of the leading voices of fidelity, continuity, and tradition in the Church today.” In some ways, it is hard to account for the scope of his influence, in light of the fact that Bishop Schneider is only an auxiliary bishop of Astana, in Kazakhstan, a country with only around 150,000 Roman Catholics. (Astana is the former and about to be restored name of the city currently named Nur-Sultan, which is where Pope Francis visited this past week.)
Even though Kazakhstan is the world’s ninth largest country, many have never even heard of it (at least not until Pope Francis' recent visit there). So it is a bit of a marvel that, in spite of the relative humble obscurity of his role as an auxiliary bishop serving in that less-than-famous locale, Bishop Schneider is invited often to appear in many far-away places.
In 2018, I had the privilege to interview Bishop Schneider in the San Francisco Bay Area after he celebrated a Pontifical Mass at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Oratory when the oratory was still hosted at Five Wounds Portuguese National Church in San José.
After the interview, Bishop Schneider went to Monterey, where he was the principal speaker for the 2018 Latin Mass/Keep the Faith Conference, which was the main event that brought him to the Bay Area. Then, after the conference, Bishop Schneider was a guest for dinner at Archbishop Cordileone's residence.
Enmity or Fraternal Correction?
Bishop Schneider is portrayed by some as an enemy of Pope Francis, because he speaks frequently in what he refers to as fraternal correction to some of papal actions. For one example, in our interview, he spoke about how he and two other Kazakhstan bishops released a statement on the indissolubility of marriage on December 31, 2017 in response to the much-disputed footnote to the pope's Apostolic Letter Amoris Laetitia, which allows some couples living in unblessed marriages to receive Communion after "accompaniment."
More recently, in January 2022, Bishop Schneider asked the pope to rescind the provisions contained in Traditionis Custodes and in the Responsa ad dubia issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW) just before Christmas, which restricts the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass and the sacraments according to the books in effect in 1962. See here.
And then this week, a Reuter's article titled "As pope Kazakhstan visit ends, conservative critic speaks out," described Bishop Schneider as an "arch conservative who has often pointedly criticised the progressive pope on a host of issues." The article quoted Bishop Schneider's objections to the pope's visit to Kazakhstan for the Seventh Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions:
"'While praising the congress' ability to 'promote mutual respect in the world,' Schneider, 61, said he believed it risked the 'danger' of putting Catholicism on the same plane as other religions."
So, I wondered if Bishop Schneider would meet Pope Francis when the pope was in Kazakhstan, and if so, whether the meeting would be cordial—until I saw the following photo. The photo looks pretty cordial to me.
Catholicism in Kazakhstan
(Excerpt from the earlier-mentioned Homiletic and Pastoral Review article titled "Kazakhstan Bishop Schneider Broadcasts Seeds of Faith Around the World")
The story of how Bishop Schneider came to become a contributor to the renewal of Catholicism in Kazakhstan in the post-Soviet area, before he become a world-traveling proponent of traditional Catholic teachings, is well worth reading about.
Bishop Schneider was born, baptized, and was named Anton in 1961 in the former Soviet Union. He first learned to practice and treasure his faith from devoutly Catholic parents, who experienced extreme hardships and upheavals during World War II, and later under Soviet rule.
His parents were originally among hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans whose forebears had settled in villages near Odessa in the Ukraine, on the Black Sea. In an interview quoted in a Zenit article, Bishop Schneider spoke extensively about his childhood, and the following quotes are from that article. Other biographical details were gleaned from other sources.
At the end of the Second World War, “the German Army took all these German people — 300,000 of them — [from the Black Sea area] to Berlin …. And when the Russian Army occupied Berlin, they took back these people as ‘forced labor’ to three places — Kazakhstan, Siberia and to the Ural Mountains.”
His parents were among those sent to the Ural Mountains. “They were forced to work there, and it’s a miracle that they survived. When they were freed, they moved to Central Asia, which was then part of the Soviet Union, in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, a little republic close to the Chinese border, just below Kazakhstan.” He never went to the neighboring country of Kazakhstan to the north until many years later.
“There, I was born and spent my childhood. Then we moved from Kyrgyzstan to Estonia, which was still part of the Soviet Union. There, I lived for four years.”
Always when they lived under Soviet rule, the family had to practice its Catholic faith secretly, because religion was suppressed.
Finally, they were able to attend Mass when they lived in Estonia, but it was not at all easy. “We had a church which was 100 kilometers [62 miles] away, and we had to travel that 100 kilometers to attend the Holy Mass.” His parents took their four children to Mass by train once a month (because they could not afford the fare to go more often). At the time, he was between 10 and 12 years of age. They left for Mass on the first train before dawn, and returned on the last train after dark, and “it was dangerous, because, during those times, the Communist government forbade children from participating in the Holy Mass.”
Communion in the Hand Gave Him Pain in His Soul
In 1973, after Bishop Schneider made his First Holy Communion, he emigrated with his family to Rottweil in West Germany. Shocked at the age of 12 when he first saw people taking Communion in the hand, as he told the National Catholic Register, “I carried this pain in my soul,” and it prompted him to write his 2009 book on the Eucharist, Dominus est—It is the Lord: Reflections of a Bishop of Central Asia on Holy Communion.
As a young man, he joined the revived Order of the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra in Austria in 1982 and took the religious name of Athanasius. He studied philosophy at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome, and theology at the Sapientiae Institute of Anápolis, Brazil. After he was ordained a priest in March 1990, he obtained a doctorate in patristic theology in 1997 from the Augustinianum in Rome.
Bishop Schneider returned to Central Asia only by chance. When he was still in Rome, and planning to return to Brazil, a priest whom he had not previously met invited him to help foster the revival of the Catholic Church by coming to teach at the newly formed seminary in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. In Karaganda, Bishop Schneider not only taught, but he helped build the seminary, and while he was also building the Cathedral of Our Lady of Fatima, he commissioned the Italian artist, Rodolfo Papa, to make a series of fourteen paintings for the crypt of the cathedral on the theme of the Eucharist, a subject which is always close to his own heart.
After Athanasius Schneider was ordained a bishop in June of 2006 in St. Peter’s Basilica, he was first assigned as auxiliary bishop in Karaganda. In 2011, he was transferred to the position of auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Astana, also in Kazakhstan. He also still manages to teach at the seminary.
When I listened to Bishop Schneider’s description about how he tries to evangelize in Kazakhstan through presence, through witness, and through personal contacts—I also thought about how widely he travels and teaches. This made me realize that he is doing the same thing around the world as he does in his own diocese in evangelizing through presence, through witness, and through personal contact. He seems to me to be a kind of saintly “Johnny Appleseed,” planting seeds of authentic Catholic doctrine as he travels around.
To watch Bishop Schneider’s talk at the Latin Mass Conference 2018, “The Relationship Between Tradition and Liturgy,” click here.
To read my California Catholic Daily article, "A leading voice of fidelity in the Church," click here.
To watch Bishop Schneider’s homily, “The Meaning, Necessity and Value of Prayer,” click here.
To watch Bishop Schneider’s Pontifical Low Mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary Oratory at Five Wounds Portuguese National Church, click here.
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