Tashkent (AsiaNews) Agnuz is three years old. Launched on January 25, 2002, it is the only online agency that provides news, information and documents about the Catholic Church in Russian to the Catholics of the former Soviet Union.
Its editorial office is in Tashkent, not far from the missio sui iuris in Uzbekistan. Its challenge is to create a virtual library of Church documents in Russian.
Its staffabout ten people in their 20s and 30shas already translated and put online 3 encyclicals, 2 apostolic letters, 30 homilies, 50 speeches of the Pope and more than 100 Sunday Angelus.
Everyday, Agnuz also translates news by and about the Church in cooperation with AsiaNews, some 6,000 so far.
The website's virtual library contains more than 500 books on theology, Church history, Canon Law and Christian philosophy.
Agnuz's daily service is very useful to Russian readers and others who know Russian for whom such literature is hard to come by without going to Russia proper.
The agency is financially backed by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and other Catholic organisations.
In Uzbekistan Muslims represent 88 per cent of the population, whilst Orthodox Christians are 9 per cent.