Rev. Vincentas Senkus in Marian monastery: years of work and hope

Straipsnyje nagrinėjama senosios regulos marijonų vienuolijos (pagal aprangą vadintos „baltaisiais“) paskutinio generolo Vincento Senkaus asmenybė. Šio vienuolio vienas iš svarbiausių bruožų – viltis. Nors buvo vienintelis vienuolis formaliai uždarytame vienuolyne, jis nuolat dirbo ir tikėjosi, kad net sunkiausiomis okupacijos sąlygomis vienuolija nebus sunaikinta. Taip įvyko, kai pogrindžio sąlygomis ją slapta, tik su Apaštalų Sosto leidimu atnaujino kunigas Jurgis Matulaitis ir keli jo draugai. Vienuolijos veikla oficialiai civilinės valdžios atkurta tik 1917 metaisReligious orders of Catholic Church always had and still have great influence on the religious life of lay people, and especially in the times of persecution they survived as the sources of national identity and cultural life. Therefore, they often underwent different repressions of anti-democratic regimes. Nowadays it is difficult to find family roots of Fr. Senkus. The archives of his native Šunskai parish as well as the most archives and libraries of the region had been decimated during the war and post-war period. It is known that the last Superior General of the White Marians was born on the 6th of October, 1840 in Marijampolė county, Šunskai eldership. At the age of 15 he finished primary school in Marijampolė, and in 1858 he joined the Marian Order in the same town and started his studies of the priesthood. He passed his exams in Seinai and was ordained as a subdeacon by the famous Samogitian bishop Motiejus Valančius. Later he studied at the Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw (1862–1866) and got a diploma. There he had to wait for the appropriate age to be ordained as a priest and in 1864 he became one. As a priest with a degree in theology, he got back to Lithuania and worked in Marijampolė for some time. Later he was sent to the neighbouring parish of Sasnava, where he built a church. During the years of tsarist occupation, when the Catholic Church was persecuted, Fr. Senkus became the Superior General of the White Marians in 1892. Fr. Vincent Senkus remained in a formally closed monastery as a parish priest. Living on the hope of God, the old Superior General believed in a miracle which happened, when in underground conditions, a young priest, professor of St. Petersburg Spiritual academy Jurgis Matulaitis with the permission of the Holy See made his first monastic vows. [...]LKB istorijos centrasVytauto Didžiojo universiteta