Patriarch Kirill conducts requiem service at the place of Solovki Prisoners’ Execution

Solovki, August 24, Interfax – Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia conducted a requiem service at the place where prisoners of the Solovki Camp were executed and a prayer service to new martyrs who suffered for faith from the Bolsheviks.

He visited the Golgotha-Crucifixion Hermitage on the Anzer Island Saturday morning. Once there was a hospital for typhus and disabled prisoners.

According to witnesses, instead of extending medical help, the sick people were turned out naked to the frost and left at the ice wind in bell towers to speed up their death.

Having prayerfully commemorated the Solovki victims near the worship cross not far from the communal grave, Patriarch Kirill walked to the top of the Golgotha Mountain and looked at the tombs of prisoners located at its slopes. The Patriarch also saw a cross-shaped birch that had grown there.

Addressing the hermits, the Patriarch said this place was marked “with great human sufferings and great spiritual heroism.”

“The Lord Himself chose this deserted island, so that His death and Resurrection were specially commemorated here, the Lord Himself chose this place for people to take incomparable sufferings and torments. We believe that these sufferings and torments have strengthened power of the Church as the Church grows with Divine power rather than with human one,” the Patriarch Kirill said.

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