St. Catherine Russian Orthodox Church (Rome)

Vatican City / Rome
 2006_construction, Russian Orthodox Church, Orthodox church

The first Russian Orthodox shrine in Rome, Italy.
consecrated May 24, 2009.
The history of the St. Catherine church compound goes back to the 19th century, when a proposal was put forward for building an Orthodox church in the Italian capital. After the Italian authorities gave permission for the project and a land plot was bought for the future church, last Russian tsar Nicholas II ordered in 1913 that donations be collected throughout Russia for building the church. However, the 1917 Bolshevik revolution thwarted the plan.

In the 1990s, the Russian Foreign Ministry came up with an initiative to revive it. The idea received the blessing of then head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II. May 2004 saw the emergence of a fund for building the compound. The fund was headed by the present head of Russian Church, Patriarch Kirill, who then was Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad and headed the Department for External Church Relations. The fund's members included ballet dancers Andris and Ilze Liyepa, soccer player Andrey Shevchenko, President of Vneshtorgbank (the present VTB) Andrey Kostin and Russian Ambassador to Italy Alexey Meshkov.
In December 2007, Metropolitan Kirill consecrated one of the churches construction sites on the compound, the church of St. Constantine and St. Helen.
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   41°53'40"N   12°27'15"E

Comments

  • I am curious: is Fr. Pavel Fokiin vladyka of Italy now since he was transfered to Rome after he threw me [Alekcandr Matley] out of St. Nicholas San Francisco, and he was removed from the US, not finding him fit enough to be vladyka of the US. Where is he now, wish all the best for him. Alekcandr
This article was last modified 14 years ago