Savisaar: Lasnamäe Orthodox Church Will Be Ready By Deadline
27/6/2012
Estonia
Upon returning from a three-day official visit to Moscow today, Tallinn Mayor Edgar Savisaar said that the construction of the Orthodox Church in the city’s Lasnamäe district will be completed by the planned 2013 deadline.
According to Savisaar, during his stay in Moscow, he met with heads of the Andrei Pervozvannoi Fund, which supports the building of the church, which is in Savisaar’s electoral district. “We were solving issues regarding the building of the church and the bell tower,” he said.
Based on how the meeting went, Savisaar said, the church will open next year and it will be an establishment that Orthodox Christians “can be pleased with.”
Asked by uudised.err.ee to disclose the sum that the fund would allocate for the project, the mayor refrained. “The sum is sufficient to continue with the construction,” said Savisaar, adding that private donations in Estonia had also gained momentum and people were increasingly supporting the construction.
In 2010, Savisaar found himself at the center of a political scandal after a Postimees article claimed the national security agency had discovered that Savisaar received 1.5 million euros from Russian sources. The journalist received a prize for investigative journalism for the story, which portrayed the deal as a covert attempt to fund the Centre Party as well as the church through the deep pockets of Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin.
