65th Great War anniversary: The first monastery in the world, dedicated to heroic deed of the fallen in the Great Patriotic War

The grand ceremony of the Orthodox monastery foundation, dedicated to the heroic deed of the fallen in the Great Patriotic War will take place on December, 4 in the place where the Soviet troops managed to lift the enemy’s siege in Vyazma by the village of Vsevolodkino not far from Smolensk.

“The location of the memorial monastery is not chosen accidently. The Russian people remember battle fields of Kulikovo and Borodino as symbols of escape from the mortal danger which threatened our Motherland. Vyazem battle field should enter this list of historical names as well. Formally here our Army suffered a defeat and heavy casualties, but actually in this place they won the important strategic and what is more the spiritual victory, which has not been understood to the full extent by our society yet”, – announced the representatives of the memorial public center “Candle of memory”. The organizers of the function stressed that such a spiritual-memorial center had been created for the first time in the whole post-war period not only in Russia but in the whole world. It was Patriarch Kirill I who in 1995 came up with an idea to create a special convent in the memory of the fallen in the Great Patriotic War in order to commemorate the 50^th Anniversary of the Great Victory when the present Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church headed the Smolensk department.

The principal mission of the convent will be the remembrance in prayer of the fallen soldiers who were killed not only during the Great Patriotic War but also nowadays. The motto of the new Orthodox monastery will become the words “All alive for God”.

During 2010-2011 the monastery will become one of the centers of the international ecclesiastical-public function “Let’s remember all by names”, which will carry out the remembrance in prayer of every fallen stated in the lists of the missing after the War.

The fund of St. Theodor Stratilates and the sister of the Spaso-Bogoroditsky monastery will work on the creation of the “Electronic prayer”, which will become the national information database of the prayer remembrance available via the Internet.