The head of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has formally consecrated the church in Paris that serves as the centrepiece of the new ROC centre near the Eiffel Tower.
Patriarch Kirill led the hours-long ceremony at the gold-domed Trinity Cathedral yesterday. He said the church was a symbol of the close ties between the peoples of Russia and France, saying: "It's a monument to our close relations in the past and, certainly, a symbol of what awaits us in the future."
He also thanked France for its hospitality to Russians escaping from the country after the Revolution of 1917.
He urged Russians living abroad to "consider themselves members of the Church and to go to church... and by no means allow their children to lose their language and culture".
"It's your duty. You can live wherever you want, but you can't break spiritual and cultural ties with your people," he said.
Around 500 members of France's Russian community attended the event, as well as the Paris mayor, Russian model Natalia Vodianova and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's wife Svetlana.
The opening of the cathedral marks another diplomatic move by President Putin's government, with which Kirill is deeply involved. While suggestions that the Russian Orthodox Centre could be used to spy on nearby French intelligence agencies and government departments have been dismissed, the ROC is deeply indebted to Putin's regime and its senior clergy sometimes play quasi-diplomatic roles. Kirill was due to meet today with France's President Hollande, a fierce critic of Russian foreign policy in Syria and Ukraine.
