Londono lietuvių katalikų bendruomenė ir marijonai 1931–1946 m

Abstract

Formed from 1896 to 1898, the Lithuanian community in London experienced stability in the 1930s. About ten organizations, all of them Catholic, were active. Their leadership came from the ranks of several dozen elderly community activists born sometime around the 1880s. Younger people with civic interests did not join the boards of these Catholic societies accentuating linguistic Lithuanianism and instead preferred to express themselves in sports clubs or amateur theater groups. One reason for this state of affairs might have been the reluctance of ambitious older generation civic leaders to admit younger people into their ranks. After the demobilization following the end of World War I, many young people turned away from Lithuanian community life, the activities of which were left to their parents. Rector Kazimieras Jurgis Matulaitis in 1926 entrusted the Lithuanian Mission of London to the Marian Fathers. This congregation was re-established on 1911; and in the first decade after the end of World War I it became active in Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, the United States, and Manchuria. The Marian rectors took over the spiritual care of London Lithuanians in 1931, and the local Marian Congregation (House) was formally founded in 1934, with the London parish being assigned to the Lithuanian Marian Province. In the early 1930s the entire Marian Congregation prospered and the Marians of the Lithuanian Province especially were interested in taking over the London pastorate. It was expected that local Lithuanians would be financial lenders to the Marian Fathers under mutually acceptable conditions – and they were indeed. In addition, the Marian leadership in Rome imagined that London was a good base from which to develop new missions throughout the British Empire. But from 1933 to 1939, under the leadership of General Andrejus Cikota, the Marian Congregation experienced a crisis, with the result that a large part of its membership left it. [...]