The Moscow Church does not want Stalin to be depicted in the new church of the Armed Forces.
The disagreement was expressed by Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk. “I believe that the images of Stalin should definitely not be placed in a Russian Orthodox Church, because Stalin was a persecutor of the Church. the blood of millions, including new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church, is on his conscience, “the Metropolitan told Rossiya 24 (VGTRK) TV channel.
“The church is neither an exhibition hall, nor a panorama of the Battle, nor a place where military parades should be depicted,” he stressed. “The church is a place of prayer and I believe that the whole decoration of the church should pursue that goal.”
It is recalled that it was also planned to have a portrait of Putin in the same church, but he allegedly asked for the cancellation of such a plan.
Also, initially the president of Experts’ Council for Church Art, Architecture and Restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archpriest Leonid Kalinin, had stated that Joseph Stalin as the supreme military commander of the Soviet army in the period 1941-1945 will be included in the mosaic entitled “The Victory Parade,” which was created based on photographs.
“The council considers these images to be absolutely appropriate, reflecting historical truth from which pages cannot be torn out arbitrarily,” said Archpriest Leonid Kalinin.
However, he said that some members of the council of the Russian Orthodox Church did not agree with this position. “Not everyone likes it, not all members of the council like it, maybe because their relatives were unjustly persecuted, something that I don’t like either. We cannot tear out this page from history nor did we celebrate the memory of a man who contributed greatly to this Victory, we cannot. Therefore, reluctantly, we did it,” added Archpriest Leonid Kalinin.
