To stay in Moscow into August 5, the relics will be open for worship at the cathedral and in St. Daniel's Monastery, one of the official residences of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia-Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The relics will next travel by air to the Russian Far East. Once in the Pacific port of Vladivostok, they will be placed in a railway car made into movable church for the occasion, to travel on by land, from August 14 on.
The itinerary covers not only Russia but Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and the post-Soviet Baltics.
The relics will return, next February, to St. Mary Magdalene's Church at Jerusalem, of the Russian Church in Exile, where they have been preserved since 1921.
The bringing of the relics is one of the first major joint actions by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Church Abroad. It is coming as a stride toward reunification of the two separated Russian Church branches, Alexander Bishop of Dmitrov, spokesman of the Moscow Patriarchate, said to Novosti. "Certain people in the flock of the Russian Church Outside of Russia view the initial steps to rapprochement with apprehension. We have to establish contacts not only with its hierarchs but pious people of the laity. It will take time to dispel their prejudice," he sighed.
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Theodorovna, granddaughter of Britain's dearly loved Queen Victoria, and elder sister of Alexandra, Russia's last Empress, was given in wedlock to Grand Duke Sergius, uncle of Nicholas II, and Moscow Governor General. Elizabeth willingly discarded her Protestant denomination to embrace Russian Orthodoxy, and became one of the most dedicated daughters of her adoptive Church. She took the veil after her husband fell in a terrorist bomb attack in 1905. Sts. Martha and Mary's Convent, of which Elizabeth was founding Mother Superior, threw its doors wide-open to the poor and the sick, and all otherwise in need of help. Elizabeth was working her hands to the bone together with her nuns. The laity lovingly referred to her as Royal Mother Abbess. With the revolution of 1917, the entire Martha and Mary sisterhood was put under house arrest. Elizabeth was promised safe passage if she emigrated. The saintly lady staunchly refused to leave the land to which she had given her heart. Cheka men took Elizabeth and Sister Barbara, her dedicated follower, off to Perm and on to Alapayevsk, in the Ural foothills, where many of the Royal family were awaiting their doom under arrest.
Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children and a few courtiers of ardent loyalty met their death by the firing squad in Yekaterinburg, in the small hours of July 17 (4, Old Style), 1918. Alexandra's sister shared her doom the day after. Sister Barbara met martyrdom at her Mother Superior's side.
The Russian Church in Exile canonized the holy nuns with the other new Russian martyrs back in the 1920s. The Russian Orthodox Church followed it as late as 1992.
