…for relic tours.
John the Baptist’s hand is touring Russia.
The return has been hailed by the Russian Orthodox church with great pomp and reverence. The head of the church, Patriach Alexei II, welcomed it at a ceremony on Wednesday at the Church of Christ the Saviour in central Moscow. The hand will remain there until Friday, when it will be taken on a tour of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine before returning in July to Montenegro, its present home.
The Patriach called on Christians to pray before the hand, according to the state news agency RIA Novosti.
The relic’s return to Moscow is part of an orchestrated revival of the church, which is playing a central role in giving Russians a sense of spiritual and national belonging. The move was financed by a religious foundation chaired by Vladimir Yakunin, the head of Russia’s vast state railways network who is frequently referred to as a potential successor to President Vladimir Putin.
The relic which they believe to be the hand of John the Baptist is on public display in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow.
It is back in the Russian capital for the first time since the mother of the last tsar, Empress Maria Fyodorovna, fled with it in the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
After that it was cared for in Russian emigre communities, before finding a more permanent home in a monastery in Montenegro.
The queue to see the relic stretches for hundreds of metres.
It begins beneath the shining onion domes of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and ends near the banks of the Moscow river, in the heart of the Russian capital.
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