Head of Russian church chanted first in history patriarchal liturgy in China

At the ancient Red Fanza Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill has chanted the first in history Patriarchal Liturgy in China.

At the ancient Red Fanza Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill has chanted the first in history Patriarchal Liturgy in China. On the territory of the Russian Embassy, ​​where once the Russian Orthodox Mission was located, there gathered more than five hundred Orthodox Christians – Russian citizens, living and working in China, the Albazinians – descendants of Russian Cossacks who settled in Beijing at the end of the XVII century and the Orthodox Chinese. Besides them, the service was attended by Orthodox Ukrainians, Belarusians, Serbs, Bulgarians, French and Americans.

The Gospel was read in Church Slavonic and Chinese. The Liturgy was held in the open air among huge flowering acacias. The choir of the Moscow Novospasski monastery added to grandeur of the Easter service.

“For us it is an extremely important event. Patriarch Kirill met with the leaders of Chinese governing bodies. We hope that this visit will favour the revival of Orthodoxy in China,” said spokeswoman for the Albazinians Matrona Van from Cossack Dubin family in an interview with the ITAR-TASS news agency.

“The Chinese Orthodox Church has been there for more than three hundred years,” said the Patriarch after the meeting with President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping. He noted that in the 1940s-1950s, “it was headed by two Chinese hierarchs, there were dozens of Chinese Orthodox priests.”

Now, according to some estimates, China numbers 15 thousand Orthodox believers.

Patriarch Kirill made his first-ever visit to the Celestial Empire. The programme of the visit included a visit to Harbin and Shanghai, a home for the largest Russian diaspora in the late XIX-early XX centuries.