The Moscow Patriarchate parish of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing wives can soon be deprived of their building. "Unfortunately, we don't have our own church. In 2003, the Catholic Diocese has given us a temporary place for celebrating divine services - the old church of Beheading of St. John the Baptist, which houses our parish today," rector of the parish Archpriest Alexy Yastrebov told in his interview with Interfax-Religion.
According to him, they promised to lease this or other church for permanent rent basing on the contract of a long-term rent.
"Unfortunately, many years of promises of a long-term rent given by Catholic authorities of the city have not been fulfilled and none of the churches has been given to us. Soon, we will have to abandon the building we are using now as it will be given for needs of a female congregation," the priest said.
He told there were a lot of closed or rarely used churches in underpopulated historic center of Venice.
"We were ready to consider the option of a church that needs expensive restoration, but we expected acceptable terms of the contract, we need a truly long-term rent, for example 99 years, not 19 as they suggested us. Numerous addresses to secular authorities have not brought any results. We wanted a land lot from municipality. Every Venice mayor promised us help, but nothing was fulfilled," the interviewee of the agency said.