MOSAR, Belarus -- Juozas Bulka began life anew in 1985.
That was the year Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced his campaign against alcohol consumption. Bulka was working in an electric-meter factory in Vilnius, the capital of the then-Soviet republic of Lithuania. Under Gorbachev's program, it was illegal to drink while working, or in spas, on picnics and tours, in parks, and on public transportation.
One day, Bulka discovered the secretary of the factory's Communist Party cell drinking with other administration officials. These were the very people responsible for enforcing the antialcohol ordinances.
Bulka complained to senior management. He was fired shortly after.
Only his faith in God and the strength of his beliefs, he says, helped him to survive this blow to his morality.
At the age of 60, Juozas Vintsentavich Bulka decided to become a priest and to fight alcoholism, wherever the Catholic Church sent him. A year after being ordained, he was assigned to the small northwestern Belarusian village of Mosar, where -- in defiance of aggressively atheistic communist policy -- stood the 200-year-old Church of St. Hanna.
Alcoholism is rampant in Belarus. In 2007, doctors registered 178,000 alcoholics in the country -- 4,000 more than the year before. In the past five years, the number of female alcoholics has risen from 7,000 to 46,000. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), life expectancy among males in Belarus fell dramatically in recent years and is currently around 63 years. The WHO says Belarus also suffers from the highest level of deaths in Europe due to alcohol poisoning and also has one of the highest suicide rates.
"I promised to fight against alcoholism when I was only 12," Bulka remembers. "Already at that age, I realized that the unrestricted use of alcohol only leads a person towards evil and tragedy. I swore this before God and have never lost faith that I chose the right path. The only thing I regret is that I didn't become a priest in my youth, because then I'd surely have achieved much more."
"I remember well when Father Juozas came here," says Sofia Yakimovich, the head of the village. "At first, everyone was embarrassed to talk to him since he was Lithuanian and didn't understand our language well. People would watch him from afar and then talk about him -- 'small, stocky, walks with a cane.'
"I was the first to talk with him when my husband died back in 1989. I came to him to ask that he hold a service for my husband, and he immediately asked, 'Will you have vodka there? If you will, I won't do anything! It's a sin to drink at a funeral!' Back then, it was customary for us to have no less vodka for a funeral than we would for a wedding -- 50 or 60 bottles. But what can you do? The new priest made a request, so I promised that there wouldn't be any vodka."
According to local custom, three toasts must be made to the peace of the immortal soul. But mourners never stopped there and often woke up the next day with an aching head or under the neighbor's fence. No one in the village would have found it strange if someone had drank so much they fell into the snow and froze to death, or got run over by a car.
At first, the 440 inhabitants of Mosar considered Bulka an eccentric.
Bulka stepped out of the house into the winter cold and started walking the 10 kilometers home, leaning heavily on his cane.
Realizing that something improper was taking place, the villagers ran after him, begging him to return. They knew it wasn't proper to bid farewell to the dead without a prayer. But Bulka wouldn't forgive them, even when they poured all of the vodka onto the ground.
"Ask another priest," he told them. "I do not believe you anymore!"
He walked alone through the dark forest, refusing a ride home.
Villagers remember how the debates between the two men would go on for hours, ending with varied results. It could be that Bulka would return to the church in anger and take his heart medicine, recalling Mikhal's words: "You won't change anything! We used to drink vodka and will continue drinking!" Or the evening could end with Mikhal crying guilty drunken tears in the priest's home, hearing how a soul returning to God first of all deserves forgiveness.
Three days before his death, the shepherd came to Bulka and asked to be baptized and allowed to attend confession. In the end, in the cemetery, Bulka mourned not an ideological enemy, but a new friend.
Bulka has proposed that vodka be outlawed from the shops in Mosar. Not everyone appreciates this initiative to establish the village as an alcohol-free zone.
"For a long time now, Bulka has been violating our personal rights," says Ivan Zabela, a retired dentist. "Can you imagine, he even managed to close down the club in our village. He complained before the village council that youngsters almost never visit the club's library, but instead regularly go to the disco, where they're allowed to drink. I agree -- fighting alcoholism is a worthwhile cause. But every person must have the right to choose. Go to the library, or not. Drink vodka, or not."
"He forces people to share his views," continues Zabela. "He's no democrat, since he can't forgive a person for his failings. And he's certainly no politician!"
"A true priest has to know how to give a speech, so that people go to church to listen to him. But Bulka speaks with a Lithuanian accent, and even mixes in Russian or Polish words. And he only says one thing: 'Don't drink vodka! Don't drink vodka!' And if he sees a drunk, he yells at him, and then regrets it. In front of me, alcoholics cry bitter tears all by themselves. I tell them to come to the village council and reprove them until they start crying. But for some reason Bulka still gets more respect. Even a drunk will kiss his hand because he's a priest, and at me he'll only look askance."
Others swear by Bulka's positive influence.
"I suffered so with my husband and had no idea what to do. Every evening he would return home three sheets to the wind," says local resident Alla Starychonak, a dairy worker. "When he returns drunk, he starts to yell at me and at the kids. The next morning, he would ask me to forgive him and would make promises to stop drinking. Once, I was so fed up, I finally said, 'Don't make promises to me! Instead, swear to God that you'll kick drinking!' "
Starychonak says the couple went to St. Hanna's, and that Bulka placed his hand on her husband's head and "muttered something" to him. "After that," she says, "my husband really did stop drinking ... He said he would keep his promise and visited Father Juozas every Sunday. What they spoke about during those visits, I have no idea. But it's been about two years since I've seen my husband drunk."
"I was never a sincere believer," Shyjonak says, "but I heard about [Bulka] and decided to have a talk with him. I would never have thought that support from the outside could have such an effect. We talked not only about the dangers of alcohol but about life -- its flowers, my future plans. Gradually -- not immediately -- my craving for alcohol abated and disappeared. Thank God, it's 11 years and seven months now that I've been sober."
Many similar stories were recounted at St. Hanna's during the foundation laying for the church's Alley of Sobriety, another of the priest's ideas. "When a person needs moral support in fighting alcoholism," Bulka explained, "then he may plant a tree here, so that it grows and strengthens as strengthens the will of a man ready to fight against his addiction."
The village of Mosar has become something of a tourist attraction, thanks to Bulka, who's now 83. Some even call it the "Belarusian Versailles."
The renovated church is an architectural monument to classicism, its graves adorned with artistic sculptures, and nearby sits a large park with artificial ponds, ornamented bridges and countless flowers growing along the paths.
Visitors drink the curative spring water, smile at the inhabitants of the ostrich enclosure, and admire the first monument in Belarus to Pope John Paul II -- built at the initiative of Bulka, who once had an audience with the pontiff. To be honest, everything in Mosar is the result of Bulka's initiative, and he spends every day caring for his holdings -- tidying around the church or watering the plants.
"I talk with the plants as honestly as I do with God," Bulka says, folding his hands in prayer. One can clearly see they're the hands of a gardener -- broad, strong, wrinkled, stained by the soil. "I pray for saving every lost soul -- in Mosar, in Paryzh, and in the whole world," he says. "Maybe I really am too demanding of people, but I don't follow this path for the sake of awards or recognition. I ask for only one thing: May the Lord show me how to turn mortal life into a blooming garden of paradise!"
The only antialcohol museum in Belarus -- perhaps in the world -- is housed in the church's bell tower. There aren't many exhibits, but it's the idea that matters. Posters warn against alcohol abuse. People leave written requests asking God to help them and their relatives fight alcoholism on a table on which rests a samovar and cups.
"There is no Paris without the Eiffel Tower!" Bulka laughs.
The construction of the 30-meter-tall "Eiffel Tower" was carried out by Hlybotskiya Elektrasetki. For some, the tower resembles little more than a power pylon with a cross on top.
"The work of Eiffel wasn't understood at first either," laughs Bulka. "They called it a 'defective street lamp' and a 'bell tower skeleton.' But now the world comes to see this wonder. When our tower finally gets electricity, it will shine with many lights and embellish the neighborhood!"
Every weekend, Bulka greets dozens of tour buses, whose passengers are accustomed to completely different sights in their Belarusian villages -- abandoned farm buildings, heaps of compost, and bumpy roads with everlasting puddles and dirty ducks bathing in them.
According to local residents, Mosar looked no better 18 years ago when Bulka first arrived. Horses grazed under the walls of the church. The church was surrounded by a swamp through which women dressed up for Mass had to trudge in their best shoes. The first thing Bulka did after coming here was to build a proper road to the church. He planted juniper and blue pines along the road.
That is the road the villagers use even now. Few of them know, however, that Bulka paved it with his own money. For that, he sold the apartment he inherited from his mother in Vilnius, where he had no intention to return.
Today, Bulka receives donations for the realization of his artistic ideas from those caught up by both his vision and his industriousness -- rich art patrons, national organizations, and common people.
Bulka sometimes gets the local drunks to work in the church's park. He hires them through the district cultural department as janitors and general purpose workers. Under his guidance, fans of the drink trim trees, plant flowers, and mow grass. And no one, as long as he works for Bulka, takes even a sip of vodka.
"A man capable of recognizing true beauty and ready to involve himself in creative work," Bulka says, "will never look for comfort in the bottle."
Passo e chiudo.
FRA
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