Recent Events

It might be that in three years the Children Foster Care House of Šakiai is closed as the Ministry of Social Security and Labour has decided to restructure everything so that not only large state-owned residential homes with 100 or more homeless children will be closed but also small family like children care houses in the districts will be destroyed as well.

Three years ago Ministry of Social Security and Labour did not object that new care foster house was built in Šakiai. However presently they don‘t want it to be there anymore.

Several Lithuanian pastors and Bishop Mindaugas Sabutis spent the first week of Passiontide visiting the City of Rome, where they toured many of its historical sights, such as the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, St. Peter’s Basilica, Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls (burial place of the Apostle Paul), the ancient Roman Pantheon (a church dedicated to “St. Mary and the Martyrs”), and other Christians sights.

God in his mercy and grace called from this life on March 4, 2015 Kurtas Vėlius, one of the founders of the “Tėviškės” (“Fatherland”) Lutheran parish of Chicago, honorary member of the consistory of the Lutheran Church in Lithuania, and great benefactor of the church.

This year the Lutheran Church in Lithuania is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bishop Jonas Viktoras Kalvanas, sr., who served as bishop of the Lithuanian Church from 1976 until his death in 1995. Bishop Kalvanas, who was ordained to the Holy Minority in 1940, served his entire ministry as pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran parish in Tauragė, the Martynas Mažvydas Memorial Church.

VILNIUS, Feb 25, BNS – 40 refugees from Syria, hit by a civil war, are coming to Lithuania at the invitation of Lithuania's Evangelical Lutheran Church.

The church bells of the Evangelical Lutheran parish church of Palanga now sound forth a call to worship to the people of Palanga and visitors to that city after seventy four years of silence. On Saturday, July 14, 2012 Bishop Mindaugas Sabutis consecrated the new Palanga parish church and deaconal center. The occasion of the consecration was a joyful celebration of the Sacrament of the Altar and sermon by Bishop Sabutis and overflow congregation, which included members and friends from Western Lithuania and guests from abroad.

The finalle of the precedentless case where officers of the Children’s Rights Ombudsman Institution of the Republic of Lithuania were behaving against a child.

Things which happened to Sakiai Evangelican Lutheran parish priest V. Kelertas who is 7 years in charge of public institution Sakiai Children foster home are well illustrated by a sarcastic saying: if you do good, you will be attacked, mockered, even judged. The oddest in this story is the fact that the priest who had taken care of homeless children and initiatived Children foster home foundation, given the institution a building, was whirlpooled into a several years marathon of unjustified accusations. Officers of the Department of children’s rights protection who have the duty to defend the young were acting against a child and a priest.

“Ten years ago the Lithuanian Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod entered into full pulpit and altar fellowship and this fellowship has already proved very fruitful in many areas of our church life,” stated Bishop Mindaugas Sabutis in a Vilnius meeting with Rev. Dr. Albert Collver, director of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) church relations and special assistant to LCMS President Matthew Harrison who officially visited the Lithuanian church on behalf of President Harrison. Included also in the visit on December 3, 2011 was a seminar with Lithuanian and Belarusian pastors.