The Patriarchs of all Orthodox Churches will be invited to the consecration ceremony of the St. Vissarion Smolyansky church (on the pictures). The event will take place on July 2, 2006, in the center of Smolyan (the Rhodope Mountains).
Today the town's mayor and Plovdiv Metropolitan Arsenius will discuss the details of the ritual. At the demand of the church's main donor, lawyer Todor Batkov, representatives of Orthodox Churches from all over Europe will be invited to attend the event.
In compliance with the canon, the invitations will be sent by Metropolitan Arsenius who is to decide also the relics of which saint will be placed in the church. Nobody knows where the grave of Saint Vissarion, the patron of the church, is. That's why one of the variants envisaged is that the relics of Saint Marina are placed in the newly built church.
author: Shtilyana Chakarova, StandartNews