January 19, 2010

New Martyrs Museum in Donskoy Monastery


Museum of People Hurt by Bolsheviks For Their Faith to Open in Donskoy Monastery

January 14, 2010 

The new governor of the Moscow Donskoy Monastery plans to open a new martyrs museum in the monastery and make it a place for pilgrimage of schoolchildren, students and intelligentsia.

"It's a national holy place. Firstly, it's a historical center of resistance to militant atheism and political anti-Christianity. The headquarters of holy Patriarch Tikhon was located here, and the patriarch fought for the future of the Church here," Bishop Kirill of Pavlovo-Posad said in an interview with Interfax-Religion.

The Donskoy Monastery is also a burial site for many Russian historical and public figures, including writers Ivan Shmelyov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, philosopher Ivan Ilyin, and Write Movement leaders Anton Denikin and Vladimir Kappel, Bishop Kirill said.

"It's a memorial of Russian national glory, culture, historical memory! For this reason, it is logical to create in the Donskoy Monastery a general church missionary and educational center for missionary excursions," Bishop Kirill said.