Metropolitan Mark of Berlin and Germany arrived in the Holy Land for the first archpastoral visit to the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in over a year and a half. Because to the closing of the borders of Israel due of the Coronavirus pandemic,  it has been impossible for anybody outside Israel to visit the Holy Land. With spiritual joy the members of the Mission led by Archimandrite Roman (Krassovsky) and the sisters of the Eleon Convent greeted His Eminence at the Chapel of the Finding of the Head of St. John the Baptist for Divine Liturgy on the feast of the Birth of the Forerunner. During the small entrance His Eminence awarded the cleric of the Mission, Priest Roman Gultiaev the right to wear the nabedrennik. Afterwards, Vladyka Mark raised Deacon Vyatcheslav Batalsky to the rank of Protodeacon. 

The following day, Metropolitan Mark served Liturgy at the Convent of St. Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane. Afterwords, His Eminence visited His Beatitude, the Patriarch of Jerusalem and All Palestine, Theophilos III where they discussed the problems brought forth by the pandemic and other ecclesiastical questions.

 

 

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