Kazakhstan, June 16, 2010
A Russian Orthodox priest blesses the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft at Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 1, 2010. (VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images)
Metropolitan
Nikolaos of Mesogaia and Laureotiki is on a visit to
Russia with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch
Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and at the invitation
of the “PONTOS” International Union of
Greek Public Associations of the CID countries. The
hierarch of the Greek Orthodox Church is accompanied by
archpriest Grigoriy Pigalov, rector of the Church of
the Most Holy Mother of God near Athens.
On 16 June 2010, the guests from Greece visited the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and saw the launch of the “Soyuz TMA-19″ spaceship with an international crew led by a Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin (Grammatikopoulos), a Greek by birth.