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16 May 2007, 14:11Tsars' descendant to attend Russian Church's unity act (updated)
Moscow, May 16, Interfax - Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, regarded by many as head of the Russian imperial family, is arriving in Moscow on Wednesday to attend the signing ceremony of a key unity pact between the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
Maria Vladimirovna has been invited to the event by Kirill, a senior bishop in the Moscow-based Church, priest Nikon, spiritual tutor of the For Faith and Fatherland organization, told Interfax on Wednesday.
In a letter to Maria Vladimirovna, Kirill, who is metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad and head of the external relations department of the Moscow Patriarchate, said the grand duchess' presence at the ceremony would be "evidence of the revival of ancient Russian traditions and of the reunification of our people, who were at one time divided by the revolution and the civil war."
According to Father Nikon, it has so happened historically that the head of the Russian Imperial dynasty in exile has more contacts with precisely the clergy of the Russian Church Abroad, most of whom are committed monarchists.
It was a priest of the ROCOR who baptized the newborn Maria Vladimirovna Romanova in 1954. And in December 1969, when the grand princess came of the dynastic age of 16, it was Archbishop Nikon (Rklitsky) of Washington and Florida, first vice-chairman of the ROCOR Bishops' Synod, who came over to France from the USA to take her oath.
Another well-know hierarch of the Church Abroad, Archbishop Anthony of Los Angeles and South California, married the grand princess in 1976 and baptized her son, Prince Georgy Mikhailovish, in 1981. |
