Yekaterinburg, September 14, 2010 - Interfax
The dome of the Church of the Mother of God Enthroned was destroyed and collapsed on Tuesday in a fire at the Ganina Yama site outside Yekaterinburg, where the remains of the executed family of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II had been discovered, a spokesman for the regional department of the Emergency Situations Ministry has reported.
No one was harmed in the fire and no further damage was done. The local monastery is working, and festive events to mark the monastery's tenth anniversary, scheduled for September 23, have not been cancelled, spokesman for the Yekaterinburg Diocese Boris Kosinsky told Interfax.
The diocese has urged believers to donate money for the restoration of the main church on the Ganina Yama site, where the remains of Nicholas II and his family were dumped into an unused mine in the morning of July 17, 1918.
The monastery was founded in 2000. It is comprised of seven wooden churches, all of them sanctified in honor of saints or icons of the Mother of God that are connected with the life of the tsar's family.
