PATRIARCH KIRILL GOES TO ARMENIA ON THREE-DAY VISIT
Interfax
March 16 2010
Russia
Moscow, March 16, Interfax – Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All
Russia will be visiting Armenia on March 16 to 18 at the invitation
of Catholicos Karekin II of All Armenia.
The visit will begin with a trip to the Etchmiadzin monastery, the
center of the Armenian church and the seat of the Armenian Catholicos.
The Russian Patriarch will go to the Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the
Catholicos’s residence, view the monastery’s sacred relics and lay
a wreath on the monument for Russian soldiers who fell fighting in
the Battle of Oshakan in the 1826-1828 Russian-Persian War.
The next day Patriarch Kirill will visit the memorial for victims of
the Armenian genocide, Tsytsernakaberd, and meet with President Serzh
Sargsyan. Later on Wednesday the Russian Patriarch will be received
at the Orthodox Church of the Intercession in Yerevan and talk with
representatives of the Russian ethnic community in Armenia.
On March 18, Patriarch Kirill will attend a stone-laying ceremony
for the Orthodox Church of the Exaltation of the Cross in Yerevan,
and meet with students and professors of the Yerevan State University.
An agreement will be signed between Etchmiadzin and Sergiyev Posad,
to make them twin cities.