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Church in the WorldChurches pay tribute to achievements of YeltsinRussia Josef Pazderka - 28 April 2007FOR the first time since the death of the Russian tsar Alexander III in 1894, a former head of the Russian state - the late Boris Yeltsin - was buried in the Christian rite. Boris Yeltsin, the first Russian President, died of heart failure on Monday in a Moscow city hospital, aged 76. Late on Tuesday afternoon, his body was viewed in the Church of Christ the Saviour, a cathedral rebuilt during his presidency and a symbol of the post-Communist era reunion of the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church. "His presidency was a time when new opportunities opened up for the Church. Once-confiscated churches and monasteries returned to the believers; new opportunities to use media for Christian witness appeared; religion became a frequent issue on TV. We are thankful to our first president for this chance alone, the chance to witness Christian truth before the secular world," said Fr Mikhail Dudko of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate. The funeral service on Wednesday was presided over by three Orthodox bishops, including Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Relations. Boris Yeltsin was buried the same day in Moscow's Novodevichye cemetery, where many famous Russians, including former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and the composer Dmitri Shostakovich, are also buried. "He gave all his energy to building a new Russia, in which the Russian Orthodox Church has finally got a possibility to serve and witness freely," the Moscow Patriarch Alexis II wrote in his letter of condolences. (See Konstantin Eggert, page 4.) |
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