SERGIYEV POSAD, Russia - The Russian Orthodox patriarch on Thursday blessed two giant church bells made to replace a pair that were torn down from one of the country's holiest sites and destroyed 72 years ago under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
The bells — each with President Vladimir Putin's name cast on its side in relief — are to be hoisted up next month into the bell tower outside the Cathedral of the Assumption at Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery in Sergiyev Posad, about 55 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Moscow. The blessing ceremony was the latest sign of Russia's post-Communist religious revival.
Dressed in a deep green velvet robe laced with golden thread and a matching crown-like miter, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II chanted a blessing and sprinkled the bells with holy water from a big silver cup outside the church as thousands of believers packed into the sun-drenched square looked on.
"In 1930, these bells were cast down ... and broken, and it seemed they would never be restored and placed in the bell tower of Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery again," Alexy said. "But by the grace of god they have been restored, and today we bless these two bells."
The bells — one weighing 27 tons and the other over 35 tons — were modeled after two that were destroyed as Stalin's campaign against religion raged. Church bells were smashed in cities and towns across the Soviet Union, and churches that were not torn down were used as breweries, factories, secret police facilities and for other purposes.
Restrictions on religion were relaxed in the late 1980s, and many Russians have returned to the fold of Orthodox Christianity, which is the dominant faith in Russia and was closely linked to the czarist government before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
In old Russian style lettering along the base, the two new bells bear the names of Alexy and Putin as well as the abbot of the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery and its financial manager, said Hierodeacon Yakov, a monk who heads the monastery's film studio.
Yakov said Putin was mentioned because the bells were cast under his rule — a tradition he said goes back centuries in Russia, where the name of the ruling czar was engraved on church bells. He also said it was done to thank Putin for creating a "favorable atmosphere" for religion and the church.
Putin is a practicing Orthodox Christian and in 2000 approved a new national anthem that celebrates Russia as a "holy country" that is "protected by God" — though the tune is the same as the Soviet-era anthem that once praised the atheist Communist Party.
Yakov said the bells cost more than dlrs 2.2 million to make, all of it donated, much of it from the Ministry of Atomic Energy, church officials said. A list of donors posted outside the Assumption Church — underneath photos of the broken bells — includes six Russian nuclear power plants as well as oil companies and banks.
The bells were poured at Zil, a giant factory that made the limousines Stalin and other Soviet leaders rode in.
Church and Zil officials said they are planning a third, even bigger bell to replace one that weighed more than 60 tons.
The two bells are to be raised by a 250-ton crane in late August.