Beijing (AsiaNews/OCN) – China’s Orthodox community has started celebrating Lent. Led by Fr Alexy Kiselevic, who came from Shanghai invited by the capital’s faithful, the liturgy of the first week in pre-Easter services took place in the Russian Embassy’s ‘Red Fangzi’ Building.
Evening services were performed accompanied with the reading of the Great Canon of Repentance by St Andrew of Crete. Embassy employees as well as members of Beijing’s Orthodox community were present. And two children of Embassy employees were baptised.
On Tuesday evening adults took part in catechism. Father Kiselevic answered questions on various matters of faith, among them the role of fasting in the lives of believers. On Friday evening he heard confessions, and on Saturday, the congregation took part in the commemoration of St Theodore Tyro and the adoration of the Icon of the Mother of God of Iviron.
The Russian Orthodox Church arrived in China some 300 years ago. Its first communities were made up of Russian immigrants concentrated in the north of the country. Currently there are only 13,000 believers, mostly of Russian origin, living in four main locations: Harbin in Heilongjiang (where there is a parish dedicated to the protective mantle of the Mother of God), in Labdarin (Outer Mongolia), and in Kulj and Urumqi (Xinjiang).
China’s Cultural Revolution had devastating effects on Orthodox bishops and priests. Even today there are no local priests and believers have to meet on and off on Sundays to pray. There are however 13 Chinese Orthodox seminarians studying at the Sretenskaya Theological Academy in Moscow and the Academy of St Petersburg.
The last local Orthodox priest, Alexander Du Lifu, 80, passed away in 2003 in Beijing. According to information from the Patriarchate of Moscow, Father Du “gave spiritual direction privately” because he did not have a church. Sometimes he was allowed to celebrate the liturgy in the Russian embassy in Beijing. For his funeral, the Patriarchate of Moscow obtained permission to use the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (the Nantang).