Soviet Officials Will Return Church to Lithuania Catholics

Authorities in Soviet Lithuania will return to the Roman Catholic community a church whose seizure in 1960 became a symbol of Roman Catholic grievances in the Baltic republic, official Lithuanian sources said Friday.

Municipal authorities in the port of Klaipeda, Lithuania’s third-largest city with a population of 200,000, will give back the Queen of Peace Church, which was confiscated and converted into a concert hall almost immediately after its construction.

The official news agency Tass, which gave first word of the move on Thursday, said Catholics had repeatedly asked the city authorities to let them have a proper place of worship. “Now the request of the believers has been met,” it said.