RPTC Denies Reports of Losing Part of Dmitry Donskoy’s Relics Near Lyman

The Telegram channel Alex Parker wrote that Russian troops may have left reliquaries containing part of the relics during a withdrawal in the Lyman area. The channel “Kremlin Snuffbox” claimed that the shelling hit the site of a prayer service, where officers had gathered, after which the units quickly retreated.

Vakhtang Kipshidze, deputy head of the RPTC synodal department for relations between the Church and society and the media, called these reports fabricated and suggested that they are being spread with anti-church intentions.

In July, restorers opened the sarcophagus of Dmitry Donskoy in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. The RPTC then stated that the prince’s relics, canonized in 1988, had been “found” and proposed sending part of the relics to the front in Ukraine.

Before that, Vladimir Putin had come to pray before the relics. Journalist and author of the channel “Orthodoxy and Zombies”, Ksenia Luchenko, wrote that small fragments were separated from the prince’s remains and placed in specially prepared reliquaries, which were taken as a holy object to the line of contact.

Luchenko also recalled that before this, particles of the relics of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, Saints Peter and Fevronia of Murom, Saint Luke of Crimea, and Matrona of Moscow, as well as several icons, had already been delivered to the front.

Sources

• Material: ru.themoscowtimes.com