“People will follow the holy path.” The Russian Orthodox Church refused to cancel the traditional procession of the cross, banned by the authorities of the Sverdlovsk region

The administration of the Sverdlovsk region is negotiating with Metropolitan Eugene of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye, who said that he would go along with other believers to the traditional religious procession in memory of Emperor Nicholas II, despite the fact that the authorities banned the event due to the situation with the coronavirus. About it informs Kommersant.

According to the publication, Governor Yevgeny Kuyvashev posted on Instagram a photo from the march that took place in 2020 and noted that the participants did not observe the mask regime and social distance.

“Then it seemed to us that the pandemic was on the decline, but that was only the end of the first wave. There are several proven cases that people got sick just after the “Tsar’s days”. They took the disease pretty hard, ”he explained.

However, the Yekaterinburg Metropolitanate stated that the governor’s refusal to agree on the procession does not mean that there should not be one.

“It simply does not have the status of an agreed event. Probably, it will be fraught with difficulties for people to pass, ”the Russian Orthodox Church noted.

In response to the Governor’s statement, Metropolitan Eugene explained that the procession “has long outgrown the framework of an ordinary ‘event’ and has become sacred for many people.”

“People will follow the holy path – this is obvious. Will they walk along safely blocked streets? Or on narrow sidewalks next to dangerously speeding cars? Or “goat paths”? Time will tell, ”the Metropolitan said.

The religious procession is one of the key events of the Tsar’s Days in Yekaterinburg. It traditionally runs from the Church on the Blood, built on the site of the Ipatiev House, where the royal family was shot, to Ganina Yama – the place where the remains were destroyed.