About Uzbekistan:
Uzbekistan (officially the Republic of Uzbekistan) is a landlocked country in central Asia. It’s actually a doubly landlocked country, meaning it’s surrounded by other landlocked countries, sometimes referred to as “The Stans” (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan), with no direct access to an ocean. It’s one of only two such nations in the world, the other being Liechtenstein in Europe.
Uzbekistan is known for its sites linked to the Silk Road, the ancient trade route between China and the Mediterranean.
Catholicism has an ancient, though very small, presence in Uzbekistan, dating back to the early centuries of Christianity along the Silk Road. During the period between the 2nd and 14th centuries, Nestorian (Church of the East) Christians were the first to arrive. Archaeological evidence of Nestorian crosses and Syriac inscriptions has been found in places like Termez (southern Uzbekistan).
By the 8th through the 13th centuries, the Church of the East had bishops in Samarkand and other cities. Samarkand was even an archdiocese in the Nestorian metropolitan province of “Samarkand and Kashgar” around 1280 under the Mongol Ilkhanate.
After the arrival of Islam (8th–10th centuries), Christianity became a small minority, tolerated under Muslim rulers but gradually declining.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, Roman Catholic missionaries appeared as Franciscan and Dominican friars traveled through Central Asia.
In 1333–1334, Pope John XXII established a Latin-rite diocese in Samarkand (the Diocese of Samarkand), one of the easternmost Catholic dioceses ever created. It had a cathedral and a few Franciscan friars.
Poles, Lithuanians, and Germans (especially Volga Germans) were sent to Central Asia by the Tsarist regime both after the 1830 and 1863 Polish uprisings as well as during World War I.
The first modern Catholic parish in Uzbekistan was founded in the capitol city, Tashkent in 1917, just before the Bolshevik Revolution. In the 1920s–1930s, Stalin’s deportations brought tens of thousands more Catholics (mostly ethnic Germans, Poles, and some Ukrainians) to Uzbekistan, often to forced-labor camps or special settlements.
The Soviet Era (1920s–1991) was a period of severe persecution for Catholics. In 1941, Stalin deported the entire Volga German population to Siberia. Throughout the country, churches were closed, priests arrested or executed. By the late 1930s, almost no functioning Catholic churches remained in Uzbekistan. The last public Mass in Tashkent before independence was celebrated secretly in private apartments. 
After Uzbekistan became independent in 1991, religious freedom improved slightly. Pope John Paul II established the Missio sui iuris of Uzbekistan (a mission territory directly dependent on the Holy See). In 2005, Pope Benedict XVI raised it to an Apostolic Administration (still the current structure), covering the entire country and headquartered in Tashkent.
According to The World Bank, the population of Uzbekistan was 36.36 million as of 2024, with only about 3,000–4,000 registered Catholics , mostly descendants of deported Europeans (Poles, Germans, Koreans, some Armenians, and a growing number of local Uzbek and Russian converts).
There are five officially registered parishes in Uzbekistan:
Tashkent (capital city): Sacred Heart Cathedral, (built 1912–1917, reopened 1990s, fully renovated 2010s)
Bukhara: Holy Family
Fergana: Mary Mother of Mercy
Samarkland: St. John the Baptist
Urgench (Khorezm): Saint Andrew
Priests in Uzbekistan are mostly foreign missionaries (Franciscans from Poland, Conventual Franciscans, Missionaries of Charity, some secular priests from Korea, India, etc.).
The Church runs Caritas Uzbekistan, kindergartens, soup kitchens, and medical assistance programs, which are the main form of outreach.