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Patriarch Kirill to inaugurate charitable center to help children with disabilities

The festive program will last the whole day

MOSCOW, May 18 /ITAR-TASS/. Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Kirill will open the White Flower charitable center in Moscow on Sunday to raise funds for the creation of a children’s home for children with disabilities.

The festive program will last the whole day.

The festival’s organizers hope that the event’s organizers will be able to set up and equip the premises which the Moscow government had granted to the kindergarten so that the institution could receive more children. Eighty families with children with disabilities are currently waiting for free classes.

The White Flower holiday is more than a hundred years old. Special charitable actions used to be held under Tsar Nicolas II with support from the Imperial family to fight the TB epidemic. Charitable leaflets were distributed in the streets telling about how to prevent the disease and bouquets of flowers.

The Russian Orthodox Church is reviving the While Flower tradition in various Russian regions. This year, the holiday will be hosted by Yekaterinburg, the Urals, Smolensk, Livadiya and other people. On May 30, the charitable action will take place in St. Petersburg to raise funds for a children’s hospice, the only one in Russia, headed by Priest Alexander Tkachenko. All schools in St. Petersburg and medical students have joined the charitable action.

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