Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States and International Organisations of the Holy See, spent the second day of his mission to Moscow at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the tallest Orthodox church in the world, just a short distance from the Kremlin. He was welcomed by Archpriest Igor Yakimchuk, deputy chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations. The visit followed Gallagher’s official meeting on Tuesday, 25 August, with Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, chairman of the same Department.
Despite Moscow’s already autumnal weather, the Holy See delegation was welcomed into the gold-domed cathedral for a guided tour lasting more than an hour. Gallagher was accompanied by the Apostolic Nuncio to Russia, Archbishop Giovanni d’Aniello. The tour took them through the exhibition area tracing the church’s troubled history, with sacred vestments, archival documents, sketches and precious objects that survived its destruction or were recreated by Russian craftsmen. From the lower church dedicated to the Transfiguration, the archbishop then went up to the main level, where the iconostasis and 22,000 square metres of frescoes are located. There he stopped to pray before the Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir, attributed to St Luke and today one of the principal objects of devotion among Russian believers. The visit ended on the cathedral’s terraces, overlooking the Russian capital.
The cathedral bears the marks of a long and turbulent history. The original project dates back to 1812, when Tsar Alexander I decided to dedicate a church to Christ the Saviour to commemorate Russia’s deliverance from Napoleon’s invasion. Construction, however, did not begin until 1860, and the first tsar to be crowned inside it was Alexander III, in 1883. In 1931, the Soviet regime blew the cathedral up, and after the war the site was turned into what became the largest swimming pool in the USSR. It was only as the regime began to decline, in February 1990, that the Russian Orthodox Church was granted permission to rebuild it from the foundations. The cost was covered through a fund established in 1992, financed by donations from believers from across Russia.
The previous day, at the end of a lengthy meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Gallagher issued a statement calling for the war in Ukraine to be brought to an end.
The mission, which began on Monday, 24 August, will conclude on Friday, 28 August, when the prelate returns to Rome. Today, in addition to the visit to the cathedral, the programme includes a meeting with Yuri Ushakov, President Putin’s foreign policy adviser. Thursday, 27 August, will be devoted to the local Catholic community: Gallagher will meet clergy and men and women religious, celebrate Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Moscow, and meet the bishops of the Russian Federation. The Catholic Church in the country has only a small number of faithful, scattered across a vast territory: the Archdiocese of the Mother of God at Moscow and the dioceses of St Clement at Saratov, the Transfiguration at Novosibirsk and St Joseph at Irkutsk.
