Russian Church wants to bring back St. Daniil Monastery bells from U.S.
MOSCOW. Dec 15 (Interfax)
The Russian Orthodox Church has called on the country's citizens to help raise funds to finance the return of 18 bells to Moscow's St. Daniil Monastery from Harvard.
"I think that we unanimously support the need to return these historical relics to the monastery, which needs to regain its original voice," the monastery's head Archimandrite Alexy told a news conference on Monday.
Representatives of the Moscow Patriarchy and Harvard University completed talks in the United States a few days ago. The negotiations produced a plan for returning the bells, which were sold by the Soviet authorities to U.S. industrialist Charles Crane in 1930.
Under the plan, Harvard will finance an assessment of technical possibilities and construction costs for the planned replacement of the bells. Further talks will take place if the assessment has a positive outcome. Russia, for its part, will provide funds for removing and transporting the bells, as well as installing new bells at Harvard.
Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II has already asked Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov to help bring the bells back to Russia. "This event would be of tremendous importance not only for the Church, but also for the country's secular society and our entire culture," Archimandrite Alexy said. [RU EUROPE EEU EMRG REL POL] tm tj <>
MOSCOW MONASTERY TO REGAIN BELLS. HARVARD PROMISES TO BE QUICK
MOSCOW, December 15, 2003. (RIA Novosti) - The Harvard University and St. Daniel's Monastery of Moscow are equally interested in a quick passage of monastery bells back to Russia, Archimandrite Alexius, St. Daniel's Father Superior, said to a news conference in Moscow. He had led a Russian Orthodox Church delegation to the USA for recent talks on the issue.
The Parties agreed to settle the matter as soon as possible, says a statement summing up the Harvard talks and signed by Alan Stone, university Vice-President, and Archimandrite Alexius.
Preceding the passage will be technical expertise and feasibility studies of removing and transporting the eighteen monastery bells, and their replacement by new ones at the university, point out the negotiators.
Russia has assumed all replacement, construction and transport costs, says the statement.
The St. Daniel's belfry had been Moscow's second-best, coming after the Kremlin. Its largest bell, of twelve tons, was cast toward the end of the 19th century. The two oldest, made in 1682, were donated by Tsar Fyodor Alexeyevich, Peter the Great's elder brother of a short reign and great piety.
The godless Bolshevik regime closed the monastery down in 1930 to confiscate all its property and possessions. The Father Superior and all the monks met their death by the firing squad.
The bells were to be smelted. Affluent American industrialist Charles Crane offered to purchase the entire set on request of Thomas Wittemore, Harvard staff researcher. The Soviet government ceded the precious bells for the price of a batch of bronze of equal weight. The rescued bells first rang at Harvard a year after the monastery met its doom.
St. Daniel's Monastery re-opened twenty years ago, in 1983. US President Ronald Reagan visited it the same year. That was when the prospect of the bells regained first came under consideration.