A shelter home that was run by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity for more than 20 years has been demolished by the Russian authorities in Moscow on orders of a court, which declared the structure "illegal".
The building of a neglected kindergarten was handed over to Mother Teresa Catholic Order in 1990 under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, on which it built a new shelter for homeless and disabled through collecting donations from all over the world. They had also added a floor to the existing building.
The Prefect of the North Izmailovo District of East Moscow obtained demolition orders from the Court of Arbitration and last Friday the "unauthorised" building of the shelter was razed to the ground, Izvestia daily said.
The sisters of the order have been obliged to dismantle the "illegal" floor from another building besides paying hefty fines.
Izvestia notes that the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill and Chief of the Church's Foreign Relations Department Metropolitan Ilarion had spoken in favour of sparing the shelter as it was helping the needy, but expressed surprise at the local Catholic Community leaders apathy, including that of the Ambassador of the Holy Sea, who should have been more active in defending a Catholic order.
A volunteer of the order Elena Blinova told Izvestia that the issue could have been decided without demolishing the building, even as they have now got permission for new construction.
According to the daily, the Soviet government had authorised the construction and proper permit was given to Mother Teresa's nuns, but nobody guided them about the need to register its 'entry in use' at that time, which was formally used as pretext by the new Russian authorities to seek its demolition.
The demolition of the shelter coincided with the September 24 unveiling of a bronze statue of Mother Teresa in the compound of Moscow's main Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
Mother Teresa, who was beatified soon after her death in 1997, founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950.
Its Moscow branch, which was opened in 1990, consists of nuns from all over the world.