KRYMSK, April 21 (Itar-Tass) - Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill visited the city Krymsk in the Krasnodar Territory on Sunday. This city was mostly damaged in a devastating flood in the summer of 2012, when over 150 people died, 29,000 people lost their property, 7,200 residential houses were flooded, including about 2,000 houses destroyed completely.
The patriarch led the Sunday Divine Liturgy service on the fifth week on the Great Lent at the Archangel Michael Church, where the Russian Orthodox Church had deployed the emergency headquarters to help people affected in the flood. Thousands of Krymsk residents came to attend the Divine Liturgy. The local state officials headed by Governor of the Krasnodar Territory Alexander Tkachev attended the Divine Liturgy. The patriarch also officiated a funeral service for the dead.
Recalling about his visit in Krymsk in July 2012, the patriarch noted that he was profoundly impressed “in what darkness and sorrow the fates of many people plunged in.” “And today, when in such a perfect sunshine I arrived in Krymsk, I could hardly recognize it. The city became even more beautiful than before when the tragedy broke out in the city. The wounds, which were inflicted by this horrible natural disaster, are healing gradually,” the supreme hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church said.
“Everything could have been the other way about, if people from various cities and the whole our homeland had not come for help to Krymsk. Should the Russian president and the federal authorities fail to focus attention on Krymsk. If the governor, who shared these sorrowful days with you then, had not been working day and night in Krymsk,” the patriarch noted. He recalled the Russian Orthodox Church has sent 500 people among thousands of volunteers. The donations, which the Russian Orthodox Church raised for the needs of the Krymsk residents, are used today “to help receive the housing for those, who have not received it yet, help make the repairs to those, who could not do it before for some reasons.”
After the Divine Liturgy service His Holiness Kirill introduced the bishop of the newly-formed eparchy of Novorossiisk and Gelendzhik to people and the governor. Bishop Feognost from Gelendzhik became the hierarch of this eparchy. The patriarch urged him to remember about the sorrow of Krymsk and, first of all, care for “poor, unhappy and handicapped people.”