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Foundation stone consecrated at site of church to be built by revolution anniversary

MOSCOW, December 28, 16:11 /ITAR-TASS/. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia on Saturday consecrated a foundation stone at the site of construction of a church at Moscow's Lubyanka Square. The Church of New Martyrs and Confessors will be built in the territory of the Sretensky Monastery by the 100th anniversary of the revolution.

One hundred years will be marked since the events that deeply shocked the country. A church foundation will be laid at the site where blood-sealed decisions were taken, Kirill noted.

It is done without any grudge in the hearts. "We believe the way of the Cross our country went was a way of saving Calvary for Russia," he said.

The patriarch hopes Russians will understand the sense of what happened not to repeat the tragic mistakes of ancestors.

Kirill called for arranging life not to have innocent blood shed, blasphemy and denial of God and not to deny sacred pages of the country's history.

The Russian Orthodox Church head noted the foundation stone was consecrated on the day of memory of Martyr Archbishop Hilarion Troitsky who was among those tortured to death in the Solovki prison camp.

Kirill also consecrated the new building of the Sretensky seminary opened 15 years ago.

The Church of New Martyrs of Confessors on the blood is planned to be built by November 2017, the 100th anniversary since the revolution. In the 1920s, structures of the NKVD people's commissariat of internal affairs occupied the Sretensky Monastery, which was founded in the 14th century. Afterwards, it was occupied by restoration shops, a cafe and apartments, the Superior of the monastery, Archimandrite Tikhon, said.

The 20th anniversary of the monastery restoration is marked these days.

Forty two monks and 200 seminary students reside there at present. About a thousand Muscovites come for services held in the Church of the Vladimir Mother of God Icon at the monastery.

The contest-winning project of the new church was criticized in public discussions. All the arguments were seriously studied, and some architectural conceptions were changes, Father Tikhon said.