Source: Interfax-Religion
December 2, 2015
Over 850,000 believers from seventy-three Russian and seven Byelorussian cities managed to venerate St. Vladimir relics, the Synodal Informational Department reports on Wednesday, as a result of the resumed action, during which the shrine was taken to different cities of the country. It was initiated by the Russian Orthodox Church, supported by St. Basil the Great Foundation, and timed to this year's widely-celebrated 1000-year anniversary of the repose of the baptizer of Russia.
The travels started on May 27 in Tula and were resumed on December 1 in Kaliningrad. During this time the reliquary was taken to cities of central Russia, the Volga Region, Kuban, Siberia and the Far East and to regional centers of Byelorussia, totaling eighty cities in all. According to estimates of the organizers, about one million icons were given with Patriarch Kirill's blessing to believers who came to venerate the relics.
"The reliquary with St. Vladimir's relics traveled along Russia, it visited the country's most remote corners, again symbolically baptizing Russia with the territories added to it after the saint's repose," Konstantin Malafeyev, founder of St. Basil the Great Foundation, said.
