Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem helps 1.5 thousand Ukrainian pilgrims see the Holy Sepulchre

The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission (RDM) in Jerusalem took last year 4.5 thousand pilgrims, most of which has made believers of Ukraine, said in an interview with RIA Novosti the head of the mission Archimandrite Alexander (Elisov).

The interlocutor of Agency has called care of the pilgrims, their accommodation and support the primary task of the mission, the official representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Holy land, which this year marks 170 anniversary.

Believers, he said, comes not only from Russia but from many countries near and far abroad, especially there are many pilgrims from Ukraine. “We have a huge number of pilgrims of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church coming from Ukraine…We adopted last year about a thousand of pilgrims from outside the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” said the Agency interlocutor.

“There are also a lot of Belarusian groups… we have pilgrims from the Baltic States, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany. Come from the countries of Central Asia – from Turkmenistan, from Kazakhstan the most. From the USA and Canada they even come through our pilgrimage services, as there are also parishes and dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church there,” said Archimandrite Alexander.