by Vladimir Rozanskij

Patriarch of Moscow Kirill will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the death of the last emperor of Russia with the bishops. The memory of the "royal martyrs" and the shooting ordered by Lenin.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Moscow Patriarch Kirill (Gundjaev) has officially confirmed the convocation of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ekaterinburg, in the days of the 100th anniversary of the tragic death of the last tsar Nicholas II and his family members ( v. photos), exterminated by the Bolsheviks on the orders of Lenin.

The gathering will be held July 14 to 17, and the patriarch will also consecrate the church of the Holy Royal Martyrs (Tsarstvennye Strastoterptsy) in Alapaev, always in the same area of ​​the Urals where the other members of the Romanov family were murdered. Among them there was also the princess Saint Elizaveta Fedorovna, founder of the meritorious charitable institute of Martha and Mary in Moscow, whose religious congregation other women of the imperial family joined. The princess was canonized as early as 1992, immediately after the fall of communism.

The night between July 16 and 17, the patriarch will lead a nocturnal pilgrimage with the bishops and the faithful, who will move from the "The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood" (monument to the assassination of the tsar) to reach the monastery of the "Holy Martyrs Forest of Ganina Yama", place of the discovery of the remains of Nicholas II, his wife, the five children and the three servants (including the famous Doctor Botkin), all canonized in the Jubilee Synod of 2000. Right on that night of one hundred years ago the shooting took place, secretly decided by Lenin while ahead of the expected trial of the Tsar in Petrograd.

The definition of "Royal Martyrs" is very specific in Russian spirituality, and finds few analogies in the other traditions of Eastern and Western Christianity. We can remember the saints Thomas More and John Fisher, who in 1535 opposed the absolutist aims of Henry VIII of England: they are martyrs not directly "for the faith", but rather for political reasons, which were able to give a brilliant faithful testimony in the circumstance. Nicholas II, a pious and cultured man, but very unfortunate and undecided in his responsibilities as sovereign, would not have deserved the palm of sanctity if he had not faced the last few months with a profound Christian spirit.

For a long time his canonization was contested, because of the terrible stain of the "Bloody Sunday" of 22nd January 1905, when he had hundreds of demonstrators led by the priest-unionist Georgij Gapon slaughtered under the walls of his palace, and above all of the "sacrilege" "Abdication of March 14, 1917, when he left the country to the storm of the revolution.

In Russian history there are several examples of "political" martyrs, almost all princes and tsars, called with an exclusive term of Russian Christianity: strastoterptsy, "those who have suffered the passion", a mode of "passive martyrdom" without explicit profession of faith. The first canonized Russian saints, in 1025, were the sons of Vladimir of Kiev, the princes Boris and Gleb, murdered by his brother Svjatopolk for dynastic matters. The story of their martyrdom is one of the founding texts of Russian spirituality. Only a few years later father Vladimir and grandmother Olga, protagonists of the Baptism of Kievan Rus' were also canonized: it is the group of ancient Russian saints also recognized by the Catholic Church, before the schism of 1054.

The choice of the Russian patriarch and bishops to go on pilgrimage to the Urals is therefore not only a tribute to the memory of revolutionary times, and the "new martyrs" of the 20th century, but an opportunity to retrace the path of Russian Christianity over the centuries.

On this occasion they will try to conclude the long diatribe on the remains of the "Royal Martyrs", recognized by the State, which however left the Church the last word on the proclamation of their authenticity. The remains were found in the mass burial area on which today stands the new monastery of Alapaev, which extends for 3.8 square kilometres, and the rulers at the time of the find were President Yeltsyn and the appointed Prime Minister Nemtsov, figures today invisible to the more conservative public opinion, who at the time exploited the discovery for propaganda purposes.

For this and other more technical reasons Patriarch Kirill is rather reluctant to acknowledge, in favor of that which the new metropolitan of Pskov, Tikhon (Ševkunov) is instead openly in support. At the Synod a final solution to the "mystery of the remains” is expected, but also to the confrontation between the two hierarchs of the Russian Church.