Department for External Church Relations
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His Holiness Patriarch Kirill celebrates Divine Liturgy at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on the Sunday of Orthodoxy
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On 13 March 2011, the first Sunday of Lent, when the Church celebrates the Triumph of Orthodoxy, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia celebrated the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great and the Office of the Triumph of Orthodoxy at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
Among those concelebrating with His Holiness were Metropolitan Juvenaly of Krutitsy and Kolomna; Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations; Archbishop of Philippopolis Nifon, representative of the Patriarch of the Great Antioch and All the East; Archbishop Arseniy of Istra; representative of the Patriarch of Jerusalem archimandrite Stephan; archimandrite Vakhtang (Liparteliani) from the Georgian Orthodox Church; representative of the Orthodox Church in America archimandrite Zacchaeus (Wood); representative of the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia archpriest Alexy Yuschenko; archpriest Rauno Pietarinen and deacon Petri Näkanen of the Orthodox Church of Finland; representative of the Patriarch of Bulgaria hieromonk Feoktist (Dimitrov), Moscow deans and clerics.
Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Serbia, Moldova, Slovakia, Albania, Macedonia and Poland, and representatives of the Embassies of Ukraine and Finland attended the divine service.
Also attending the service were representatives of Roskosmos (Russian Federal Space Agency).
After the reading from the Gospel, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church delivered a sermon, in which he spoke about the history of the feast and its spiritual meaning.
After the Divine Liturgy, His Holiness celebrated the Office of the Triumph of Orthodoxy and addressed the worshippers, saying, “May the Lord, Who established the Church by His Blood, grant all of us strong mind, strong will and feelings to preserve the faith that we have received from the holy apostles and to base our life on this faith, while consolidating peace, unity of mind, love and chastity in order to transform human life in accordance with the will and law of God.”
His Holiness told the worshippers that yesterday he had consecrated the Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God in Pechatniki, and that rector of the church, archpriest Oleg Klemyshev donated him an old liturgical vestment that had been kept in the sacristy of the Church of Christ the Saviour before the Revolution. “I would like this holy object to be kept at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour,” the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church said and gave it to archpriest Mikhail Ryazantsev, a sacristan of the cathedral, to be placed at the cathedral’s museum.
His Holiness greeted the cosmonauts and gave them a copy of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God to take it to the space mission that will mark the 50th anniversary of the first human space flight.
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