His Holiness Patriarch Kirill Laid Wreath to Memorial of Crimean War Heroes in Sebastopol Park of Dnipropetrovsk

24-07-2010

On July 24 in the course of his visitation of the Dnipropetrovsk diocese His Holiness Patriarch Kirill called to the Sebastopol Park of Dnipropetrovsk – military necropolis of the heroes of the Crimean War of 1853–1856.

His Holiness laid wreath to the memorial of glory of the defense of Sebastopol. The flowers were also laid by Chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchy Metropolitan Varsonofy of Saransk and Mordovia, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokalamsk, Metropolitan Iriney of Dnipropetrovsk and Pavlohrad, chairman of the Department for church-society relations archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, chairman of the Synodal Information Department V.Legoyda, deputy chairman of the DECR archpriest Nikolai Balashov, city and regional administration representatives and clergymen.

“Memory eternal” was chanted to the defenders of Sebastopol.

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill had a look at the draft of renovation of the memorial church in the Sebastopol park, which was constructed in the middle of the 19th century and destroyed in the years of the Great Patriotic War, and approved the presented project.

At the memorial of the defender of Sebastopol the representatives of the Novorossyiysk Cossaks stood in the guard of honor. His Holiness talked with the Cossacks, instructed them, calling to keep Orthodox faith, as their grandfathers did it.

A REFERENCE. The Sebastopol park in Dnipropetrovsk is a place of burial of 5000 heroes of the Crimean War of 1853–1856, when Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk) was an important administrative center with a network of temporary military hospitals.

The soldiers who died in Ekaterinoslav were buried not far from the hospital, on the south-east slope of the city hill – Soborna Hora. In 1863 to the west from the cemetery the Church of Raising of Lazarus was constructed. .

Subsequently the cemetery became public and functioned till the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, during which the Lazarus Church burned. In 1949 on the decision of the city executive committee the cemetery was closed. By 1955, when hundred years of the defense of Sebastopol was marked, in this territory the Sebastopol park was created together with memorial complex.

In the place of the ruined Church of Lazarus the communal grave was made with a mound above it, and the monument was installed. Not far from it the triumphal arch and the alley of heroes were made, with the images of Dasha of Sebastopol, sailor Petr Koshka, surgeon Nikolai Pirigiv and others who placed themselves on record in the course of the defense of Sebastopol.

In 2009 on Lazarus Saturday, for the first time in 60 years, Metropolitan Iriney celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the site of the memorial church.

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