Career
Named as the Latin-rite Apostolic Administrator of Siberia - a see that encompassed 4.2 million square miles (103 per cent of all the land on earth) and extends through nine of the world"s twenty four time zones - by Pope John Paul II on April 13, 1991, Werth initially had only two Ukrainian-born priests to help him minister to an estimated 500,000 Catholics. He has since assembled over 100 priests, nuns and lay missionaries from 18 different countries, mostly from Poland, Germany, and Slovakia, but also Nicaragua, Lebanon, India, Argentina, South of Korea, and other countries. At least fourteen are from the United States.
The Apostolic Administration of Siberia was divided in 1999 into the Apostolic Administrations of Eastern and of Western Siberia, and the Apostolic Administration of Western Siberia was elevated in 2002 to the rank of a diocese, the Diocese of Transfiguration in Novosibirsk.
The center of his diocese is at Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, where the cathedral stands. He has sent church workers to the largest cities of Siberia, as well as many towns with sizeable Catholic populations.
Later he completed his studies at the seminary in Kaunas. In 1984 Father Werth became the first Roman Catholic priest ordained since the 1930s in the Asian part of the former Soviet Union.
He pursued pastoral work at Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan from 1984 till 1988.
He was reportedly so successful in his ministry at Aktyubinsk that the local communist officials expelled him from the city in 1988. He served there until 1991. Bishop Werth is fluent in Russian, German, and Lithuanian.
He died in 1951.
The Bishop"s paternal grandmother was Paulina Demund (b 1881, Schoenchen - d 1933). The Bishop"s maternal grandfather was Dominic Hoerner (born near Odessa, Ukraine), who was deported around 1931 to Kazakhstan with his family. Those who survived did so by digging holes in the earth.
By the time the next load arrived, 12,000 had died.
This area is now the city of Karaganda, where on October 4, 1952, Msgr. Werth was born. He was the second of eleven children born to Johannes Werth (born October 1, 1923 in Schoenchen, Russian Empire - died November 18, 1995 in Ilbenstadt, near Frankfurt, Germany) and Maria Hoerner Werth (born December 23, 1931, near Odessa, Ukraine).