Yesterday the newspaper «Vedomosti» published details it had obtained about the project to turn the Moscow region town of Sergiev Posad into a Russian «Orthodox Vatican» or «Capital of Orthodoxy». The development of this project, which is supported by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), cost 300 million rubles. The project itself is expected to have a budget of 140 billion rubles, with state funding, the allocation of which, according to Vedomosti, is being sought by the leadership of the ROC.
To put this into perspective, only 50 billion rubles have been spent on the improvement of all Russian cities in the last two years, which is three times less than what is planned to be allocated for a suburban «capital of Orthodoxy».
The goal of the «Orthodox Vatican» project is to «unite a spiritual center, tourism and the interests of local residents in one place». As part of the project, a museum of Orthodox art, an Orthodox youth cultural center, a patriarchal theological library, a supreme ecclesiastical court, a building of synodal institutions, a missionary building, a patriarchal reception house, representations of autocephalous churches, and an Orthodox media center will be established in the city center. All of this, as reported, will be funded by the state, including through taxes paid by Muslims, Buddhists, Protestants, and ordinary Russians who live in cities that receive three times less funding than what is proposed for this small ROC-sponsored city.
Will this demonstrative and provocative project be approved? Yesterday, in an interview with the Financial Times, Putin again declared: «We are an Orthodox nation in Russia…» Apparently this is the answer to the question.