Sorda, Kirov Province, Russia, March 30, 2021
Photo: pominovenie-vyatlag.blogspot.com
A great spiritual event took place on Memorial Saturday, March 27, when the Church commemorates the departed, as a chapel was consecrated on the site of a former Soviet Gulag.
The Chapel of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church was consecrated by His Grace Bishop John of Urzhum and several local clerics in the village of Sorda in the Kirov Province, on the burial site of the infamous Vyatlag Gulag, reports the site Field of Memory Vyatlag.
Photo: pominovenie-vyatlag.blogspot.com
Thus, a place formerly representing the depths of human evil now represents the heights of glorification in Christ Jesus.
Photo: pominovenie-vyatlag.blogspot.com Between 1938 and 1956, more than 100,000 prisoners from 20 countries suffered in the Vyatlag Gulag, 18,000 of whom died there. Earlier this month, the foundation stone for a future church was placed and consecrated at the site of the former Piteşti Prison of communist Romania.
At the end of the service, Vladyka John congratulated all those present with the memorable day, and thanked the Keepers of the Memory, by whose labors and cares the chapel was built.
This is the first chapel in Vyatlag, where the graves of many clergymen, monastics, and laymen are located. Three of the prisoners of Vyatlag have been canonized.
The Church carefully treats the places of the burial of prisoners, heroes of the Faith and ordinary sufferers, responding to the call of the Bishops 'Council of 2011, which recommended that “dioceses, monasteries, and parishes, in cooperation with the state, the museum community and historians, participate, as far as possible, in the creation of memorial plaques, monuments, museums and complexes in places of the service, suffering, death and burial of New Martyrs and Confessors... At the same time, the Church remembers not only the saints glorified by it, but also all the innocent victims of repression, calling on society to preserve the memory of these tragic pages of history.”
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