Bishop Joseph Werth

Joseph Werth was born on October 4, 1952, in Karaganda (Kazakhstan) into a family of exiled German Catholics. After serving in the Soviet Army, he entered the underground novitiate of the Jesuit Order in Lithuania in 1975 and became a member of the order two years later. In 1979, he entered the Kaunas Theological Seminary. He was ordained a priest in 1984. After serving for a year as a parochial vicar in Lithuania, he was appointed pastor of the Catholic parish in Aktyubinsk (Kazakhstan) and subsequently in Marx (Saratov Region). In 1991, following the restoration of Catholic Church structures in Russia, he was appointed Apostolic Administrator for Catholics in the Asian part of Russia; on June 16, 1991, he was ordained a bishop—as the Titular Bishop of Bulna—by Francesco Colasuonno, the Apostolic Nuncio to the USSR. In 1998, after the administration was divided into two parts, he became the administrator for Latin-rite Catholics in the Urals and Western Siberia. In 2002, following the establishment of Catholic dioceses in Russia by John Paul II, he became the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of the Transfiguration in Novosibirsk. In December 2004, he was appointed Ordinary for Russian Catholics of the Byzantine rite. In January 2005, he was elected Chairman of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia; he was re-elected for a second term in March 2008 and held the post until 2011.