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Patriarch Kirill leads prayer at site of execution of Czar Nicholas II and his family

Kirill I called on all the believers to address prayers to the regal martyrs on the days of the centenary anniversary since their execution

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia Valeriy Sharifulin/TASS

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia

© Valeriy Sharifulin/TASS

YEKATERINBURG, July 13. /TASS/. The Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Kirill I has led a mass at the site of a basement room in the former mansion of engineer Nikolai Ipatyev in Yekaterinburg where the last Russian Czar, Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra, their five children and four servants were executed by Bolshevik revolutionaries overnight to July 17, 1918.

Located at the site now is the altar of the lower section in the Church on the Blood in honor of All Saints Resplendent in the Russian Land.

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"We can say with pleasure that the absolute majority of people today have the interpretation of the event [the murder of the Czarist Family - TASS] that stands in line with reality," Kirill I said after the mass. "That is why the veneration of Holy Regal Martyrs took root among our believers so rapidly."

"No one has any doubts today that the event, which occurred here, was really an act of martyrdom accomplished by the entire Czarist Family," he said.

He called on all the believers to address prayers to the regal martyrs on the days of the centenary anniversary since their execution "in order to assure that no civil collisions or tumults wreck our homeland in the future again."

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