Until 1848 the Catholic villages of Bessarabia and with it Krasna belonged to the diocese of Kamenez-Podolsk (Podolia), which also dispatched pastors. The spiritual guidance of Krasna suffered much from the fact that the pastors in the first decades rarely spoke German, were not very aware of colonist matters and did not care to improve their understanding of the situation. ¹⁾. It had consequences for the colonists, Brandes ²⁾ writes: Reviewing the Catholic settlement areas from the beginning to World War I, one can see that the colonies suffered from many decades of spiritual guidance by priests who did not speak their language, which set them back so far in spiritual and educational aspects, that the few decades when German graduates from the priesthood seminary in Saratov and handled the parishes were not sufficient for them to catch up with the status of the Evangelical Lutheran colonists.

Eduard Ruscheinsky confirms this in a way. He writes: ³⁾ The connection with the past was severed right at the foundation. Our ancestors at the settlement were under the leadership of pastors of foreign nationality, who were not able to communicate in German and did not care for they; they had no one who cared for them. The connection to the German homeland was severed. It was different for our Evengelical Lutheran fellow countrymen. Their pastors were educated leaders, who always cared for them.

The first pastor of Krasna was Lukas Paschkowski. He accompanied the settlers from Poland to Bessarabia. The first church, a house of prayer, in Krasna was built on his initiative. He built the first parish home in 1818 with his own funds, as is evident in a letter from the Russian Department of the Interior dated December 5, 1822. He kept a baptismal record beginning in 1814. He served the community from 1814-1821. He died on February 16, 1821 while in Akkerman. ⁴⁾

The official “instructions for interior organization and administration” ⁵⁾) dictated that once the free years came to an end, the colonists, at the cost of the entire community, had to pay for their spiritual leader and his upkeep. In 1826 the communities became obligated to pay the Catholic priest 500 rubles.
The church community of Krasna owned a total of 123 desjatines of land, containing parish land, garden and meadows. ⁶⁾ The profit from the land was supposed to pay for the salary and upkeep of the priest.

The ministry also established the costs for church services, for instance

• Baptism (25 kopeks),
• Wedding (1-2 rubels),
• Funeral (25-50 Kopeks).

A document from 1832 ⁷⁾ acknowledges these costs and the salary of the pastor as well as the amount of land of the church of Krasna.

Eduard Ruscheinsky writes about the Polish priests: ⁸⁾ From the founding until 1870 Krasna was served by Polish and Lithuanian priests. They were almost all monastic of Dominican and Trinitarian orders. The pastors were limited to administeingr the Holy Sacrament, celebrating mass and burying the dead. They encapsulated themselves in the sacristy…. It was a blessing that these Padres were very pious and lived exemplary lives. Else our ancestors could have fallen into vices, such as drinking, excess, theft and murder…. Educational success and cultural development stagnated and our ancestors were left to their own devices…they had neither religious publications or newspapers nor German Bibles.”