MOSCOW, September 11 (Itar-Tass) – Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Kirill I starts a many-day tour of Siberia and the Far East Tuesday, in the course of which he will consecrate new churches in the cities of Krasnoyarsk and Nakhodka and will visit Japan to inspect the churches rebuilt after the horrendous earthquake at the beginning of 2011.
Tuesday night, His Holiness Kirill I is expected to arrive in Krasnoyarsk. He will lead the ceremony of consecration of the city’s largest cathedral in the name of Nativity.
The new cathedral has a capacity for up to a thousand believers.
After that Kirill I will examine the site where the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Krasnoyarsk diocese will be built. In addition, he will visit the redecorated local churches in the towns of Yenisseisk and Lessosibirsk.
The visit to Japan will take place from September 14 through to September 18.
“The trip has been organized at the invitation of the Supreme Hierarch of the Japanese Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Daniel of Tokyo and the whole of Japan,” said deacon Alexander Volkov, the chief of the Patriarch’s press service.
“Kirill I will visit Tokyo and the Sendai dioceses that was hard hit by the tsunami,” he said
“Meetings with Japan’s political and state leaders have been scheduled,” Volkov said. “Japanese officials pay significant attention to the Patriarch’s trip that will be timed to the centenary anniversary since the passing-away of the Russian priest Nikolai Kassatkin who established the Eastern Orthodox Church in Japan.”
From September 19 through to 21, Kirill I will make a trip to the Primorsky /Maritime/ territory of Russia. As part of his stay there, he will consecrate the lower section of a cathedral in the name of the Virgin Mary of Kazan in the port city of Nakhodka.
Since the tour of the Far East will end September 21, a day on which the Church marks the feast of Nativity of the Virgin, Kirill I will conduct a festive liturgy on Vladivostok’s Central Square
“Kirill I has a tradition of making visits to the Far-Eastern and Siberian dioceses at the beginning of autumn,” Volkov said. “In 2010, he went to Sakhalin,Kamchatka and Yakutia and his destinations in 2011 were Magadan, Khakassia, Tyva, and Irkutsk.”