Televised address by His Holiness His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia. July 1998

Televised address by His Holiness His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia July 1998

Dear brothers and sisters!

In the coming days our country will mark one of the tragic dates in its history. Eighty years ago, on 17 July 1918, the family of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich was executed by shooting. Put to death in agony were not only the Emperor and the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, but also their children – the incurably ill boy, Cesarevich Alexey, and his sisters Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Their faithful servants met their death together with them.

Time takes us increasingly farther away from the day when this evil deed was committed. Several generations have changed during these years, but the murder of the Imperial family remains to this day a heavy burden on the people’s conscience; for our ancestors, through either direct involvement and approval or acquiescence and indifference, are guilty of this sin. It can be truly repented only if we come to a thorough comprehension of all that has happened to our country and people for the last 80 year. A visible fruit of repentance and God’s forgiveness, however, should be manifested in the spiritual and moral revival of our Motherland, restoration of peace and accord in it and abandoning as things of the past the disorders and contradictions with which, unfortunately, this century, drawing now to an end, has been so abundant.

As was five years ago, we addressed ourselves to the pastors and the flock with a Message in which “we call to repentance all our people, all their children, regardless of their political beliefs or views of history, regardless of their ethnic origin, religious affiliation, their attitude to the idea of monarchy or to the person of the last Russian Emperor”.

On July 17, the requiem services will be held in churches of the Russian Orthodox Church, commemorating the murdered members of the Imperial Family, their faithful children and “all those martyred and slain in the time of fierce persecution for the faith of Christ, whose names are known to the Lord”.

It is sad that this sorrowful anniversary of the murder of the Imperial Family has been darkened by fierce debates around the remains found several years ago near Yekaterinburg.

On February 26, 1998, our Church proposed a generally acceptable and, most important, peaceful way out of the situation. For us it is evident that the remains are those of victims of the God-struggling power. Indeed, the very locality, the Ganina Yama, was a place where mass executions were carried out in the first years of the civil war, and it is not at all difficult to find common burial places there. Without going into debate as to whose precisely these remains are and grieving the fact that they had remained unburied, the Church proposed to bury them in a symbolic memorial grave. By this the moral duty would have been fulfilled before millions of innocent people murdered, including the Imperial Family. As for the identification of these remains, time will put everything to its rightful place, when interests other then those having direct bearing on the search for historical truth will stay on the sidelines. Unfortunately, after the of the Holy Synod meeting which proposed to settle the matter in this way, the Government resolved that the “Yekaterinburg remains” should be buried as Imperial on July 17.

At the same time, in the Church and in society in general there are very many doubts as to whether the State Commission should have made the final conclusion on the identification of the “Yekaterinburg remains” as those of the Imperial Family. People’s concern has been exacerbated by the fact that the proceedings of the scientific research made at the request of the commission are little known to the broader scientific community, not mentioning their general accessibility. It is only recently that the official documents of the commission have begun to be published. Many are asking why the results of the latest investigation stand in complete contradiction to the conclusions made immediately afterwards by the commission that worked under a major investigator Nikolay Solovyev from 1918 to 1924. The materials of that investigation were published on several occasions both in Russia and abroad. Besides, the methods of the genetic expertise have provoked serious objections among both foreign and Russian researchers, including the outstanding specialist Prof. Lev Zhivotovsky of the DNA-Identification Center under the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Opinions among the church and secular public concerning the identification of the “Yekateringburg remains” have proved divided and acquired clearly a painful and confrontational nature. In this situation the Supreme Authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose duty it is to safeguard the unity of the Church and to promote civic peace and accord, refrains from supporting a particular point of view and, therefore, from participating in the burial of the “Yekaterinburg remains” in a way that could be regarded as their recognition as those of the Imperial Family.

I am well aware that this position of the Church has not been accepted by some people. I would like to explain especially to them that any scientific arguments, even those which seem to be most convincing, cannot draw the curtain over the “Yekaterinburg remains” case as long as there are no less weighty scientific objections. The duty of the Church is to discern the will of God, and it is revealed in the conciliar accord of the episcopate, clergy and the people of God, that is, the whole Plenitude of the Church. In this regard, a special responsibility is placed on us by the fact that the forthcoming Local Council of our Church will consider a possible canonization of the Imperial Family. If the Emperor and his relatives are ranked among the passion-bearers, their remains will be venerated as holy relics, and it is absolutely unthinkable that there should no agreement in the Church as to their authenticity.

Canonization, however, is above all a spiritual act. It can be accomplished even without the remains of a saint, as was the case not on one occasion. Nor it is necessary to have the remains to read the burial service, the parting prayer of the Church for the deceased. It is wrong to say that the Church has refused to read the burial service for the Tsar and his family. As a matter of fact, the burial service was read already in 1918, after the news came that the Imperial Family was killed, in many cities and villages in Russia and the world.

Even if it is not known at this moment where the remains of the Emperor Nicholas II and his family rest, the Church believes that the souls of the sufferers received repose from the Lord. And the Church prays for their repose; she prays remembering the evil deed committed and repenting of it before the Lord on behalf of all the people.

My dear ones, I call upon you all to pray on July 17 for the repose of not only the Imperial Family, but also all those who were murdered and suffered in the years of the struggle against God, so that in the spirit of harmony, not yielding to the pressure of vain discord, we may come out of the difficult time experienced today by our country, our people and our Church.