His Holiness the Patriarch conducted a thanksgiving at the Baku cathedral and consecrated an over-the-well chapel

His Holiness Patriarch Alexy of Moscow and All Russia visited the Baku cathedral on September 15, 2005. During his first visit to Azerbaijan in 2001, he consecrated this church dedicated to the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women.

Patriarch Alexy, assisted by Moscow Patriarchate Chancellor, Metropolitan Clement of Kaluga and Borovsk, Bishop Alexander of Baku and Prikaspijsk and diocesan clergy, conducted a thanksgiving at the shrine with relics of St. Bartholomew.

Then Bishop Alexander greeted His Holiness the Patriarch. For memory of his visit of the cathedral, Bishop Alexander presented the Patriarch with a carpet executed in the traditional technique, picturing the Baptism of the Lord, and a medal coined to commemorate the Patriarchal visit to Baku.

In his address to the congregation, His Holiness testified that the Orthodox life developed successfully in Azerbaijan and thanked all those who helped to restore the Cathedral Church of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women and all those who come to lift up their prayers in this church. ‘Prayer, which does not know of frontiers and distances, will continue to unite us, and we shall remember the people of sunny Azerbaijan with whom we have prayed at the relics of St. Bartholomew who enlightened this land with the light of the gospel’, His Holiness said.

The primate of the Russian Church gave an Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God to the cathedral.

His Holiness the Patriarch also consecrated the chapel-over-the-well built next to the cathedral church.