First Russian church in honor of St. Paisios to be built in Crimea

Moscow, May 18, 2017

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“With the blessing of Metropolitan Lazar of Simferopol and Crimea, the community of the future church in the village of Muromskoe in the Belogorsk region of Crimea has already been created,” Kirsanov reported.

The ceremony of consecrating the future church’s foundation stone will be celebrated on July 25, on St. Paisios’ birthday. Representatives of Russian and foreign clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, Crimean authorities, Duma deputies, diplomats, and Russian, Greek and EU public figures are expected to participate in the event.

The site of the future church was not chosen randomly, Kirsanov said. The picturesque spot by the lake in Muromskoe was historically inhabited by Greeks. The new church of St. Paisios is also to become a podvoriye of a Greek monastery, and the church complex will include a baptismal church, a bell tower, and a pilgrimage center with a hotel.

While the Crimean temple will be the first built in honor of St. Paisios in Russia, an altar was consecrated to St. Paisios in March in the Church of the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir in the northwestern Moscow district of Mitino.

With the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, the dean of the Spassky deanery, Hieromonk Daniel (Bushuev), celebrated the consecration of the St. Paisios side altar in the Church of St. Vladimir within the Church complex of the Elevation of the Lifegiving Cross, which is under construction. A Presanctified Liturgy was served following the consecration.

The foundation stone of the first Belarusian church in honor of St. Paisios was blessed on October 2, 2016 in Slutsk in central Belarus, by Archpriest Nikolai Labynko, the secretary of the Slutsk Diocese. His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch consecrated a parish dedicated to St. Paisios in Jaramana, Syria on February 3, 2017. Numerous churches throughout Greece and Cyprus have already been dedicated to the great twentieth-century ascetic.

St. Paisios was canonized on January 13, 2015 by the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and added to the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church on May 5, 2015.