Dom Madonny
Magadan, Russia
“Of all places in Russia why ever did you open a house in Magadan?” people constantly ask us. “Why not in Moscow or St. Petersburg, or somewhere also in central Russia, or even in the cities of Siberia?” Why in this dwindling city of 100,000 on the sea of Okhotsk, on the north-eastern coast of the continent; 
in this city that was founded in the 1930s as an administrative center for the forced labour camps in the region and was for so long closed to both Russians and foreigners alike? Why indeed? Because it was in Magadan (Магадан) that God opened a door.
In 1990, shortly after foreigners began to be allowed to visit Magadan, a group of Rotarians from the Yukon Territory of Canada told our Madonna House staff in Whitehorse of their projected trip. The director of Maryhouse (our field house in the Yukon) asked one of the men, a friend, to take with him a few copies of Catherine's book Poustinia. One copy fell into the hands of their interpreter, Alvina Vorapaeva. Although her grandmother had been Baptist, Alvina herself was as yet an unbeliever. The book Poustinia changed her life. She eventually came to Combermere, where she asked to be baptized. Translating Catherine Doherty's books into Russian became her life's work. Her dream was to see a Madonna House team in Magadan.
The idea that it might someday be possible to open a foundation in her native land had probably never occurred to Catherine Doherty. She had left Russia in 1919 with no hopes of ever returning, and when she died in 1985, perestroika (a restructuring of the Soviet economy and bureaucracy) was in its infancy. In the summer of 1992 our director of women in Madonna House and a staff worker came to Magadan for two weeks as guests of the small Catholic community there. The following year, three Madonna House staff workers arrived to live here permanently at the invitation of the Catholic bishop-administrator for Asiatic Russia. With their arrival, there was a sense that what Russia had given to the West through Catherine was being returned to her native soil. Catherine's long exile had ended.
Our presence is a simple one. We live in a three-room apartment, one room of which is a chapel. The neighbouring one-room apartment serves as a poustinia. Our daily life is that of Nazareth.
This land of the Cross is teaching us to stand at the foot of the Cross, in our hearts and with others, with faith in the Resurrection. We are learning to pray, to love, and to serve. We are coming to understand more deeply than over the spirituality Catherine brought to the West and transmitted to us.
People come to pray, to talk, to sip tea, to touch God's mercy. Children come and old people; believers and non-believers. Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and Buddhists. It is Our Lady's house and we believe that she leads each person here that they might be held, strengthened, and consoled in the love of her Son.
One of our great joys is that of seeing Catherine's writings become available in her mother tongue, and we have had several of her books published in Russian.
