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Ark bearing popular Saint Nicholas’ relics come to Moscow
MOSCOW — Relics of Saint Nicholas, one of the Russian Orthodox Church’s most revered figures, arrived in Moscow on Sunday from an Italian church where they have lain for 930 years. Intense media coverage accompanied the arrival, underlining the church’s influence in post-Soviet Russia.
After reaching Vnukovo airport, a glass-topped metallic ark bearing one of the saint’s ribs was visited by a long stream of pilgrims who bowed and kissed the container. It was then taken to Christ the Savior Cathedral, the enormous Moscow church that is a reconstruction of a cathedral dynamited in 1931 by officially atheistic Soviet authorities.
The relics are to be moved to St. Petersburg in mid-June before being returned a month later to the church in Bari, Italy, where they have been kept since 1087. Large crowds of Orthodox faithful are expected to visit the relics in Russia.
An agreement to send the relics to Russia was made last year between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill during the first meeting of the heads of the Russian and Roman Catholic churches.