Moscow, October 16, 2025
Photo: optim.tildacdn.com
More than 620,000 people venerated the relics of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, during a six-month pilgrimage across Russia and Belarus marking the 100th anniversary of his repose.
The nationwide bringing of the relics took place from April 6 to October 9. The reliquary visited 100 cities over 190 days, traveling more than 34,000 miles by automobile and airplane, reports the Russian Orthodox Church’s Commission for the Development of Pilgrimage and the Bringing of Holy Relics, which organized the pilgrimage.
Over 70,000 people venerated the relics over four days in St. Petersburg. In Saratov, Tambov, and Volgograd, attendance exceeded 20,000 people in each city.
The journey began in Belarus and proceeded through the Pskov Province, St. Tikhon’s birthplace, before traveling through all federal districts of the Russian Federation from Kamchatka and Vladivostok to Kaliningrad. In each region, hierarchs, clergy, monastics, pilgrims, government representatives, and members of the public received the relics. Thirty governors joined hierarchs in welcoming the relics in their regions.
Solemn divine services, exhibition openings, and concerts of sacred music were held in all cities. More than 40 processions took place nationwide. Messages from Patriarch Kirill and President Vladimir Putin addressed to the faithful were read in all locations.
The Guardian of the Russian Church concert program was based on an artistic treatment of memoirs of Maria Veshneva, a GPU employee who guarded Patriarch Tikhon during his imprisonment in Donskoy Monastery from May 1922 to June 1923. The production incorporated testimonies of contemporaries, declassified documents, newspaper publications, stenographic records of court sessions, and epistles of St. Tikhon himself.
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