MOSCOW -- Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Alexy II, who died of cardiac insufficiency last Friday at the age of 79, has been buried in Moscow’s Epiphany Cathedral. Earlier in the day, a major requiem service was held in the Cathedral of the Savior, located in downtown Moscow in a stone’s throw from the Kremlin. Requiem liturgies and prayers were chanted there for 60 hours since Saturday afternoon when the coffin with the Patriarch’s body was delivered there from his residence in a southwest suburb of Moscow.

As hierarchs of Eastern Orthodox Churches, priests and monks from around the former USSR changed one another at chanting the services day and night, thousands upon thousands of believer came to the cathedral to pay last respects to the clergyman who is widely seen as the helmsman of rebirth of the Russian Church after decades of government-sponsored suppression and restrictions.

Tuesday morning, the requiem was led by the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I, whom the canons of Eastern Orthodoxy place to the position of the head of all hierarchs of the Church. He came to Moscow Monday night to join the hierarchs of national Orthodox Churches in praying for the repose of the soul of their late brother, who had been the leader of the world’s largest Orthodox congregation.

Tuesday’s solemn ceremony was attended by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova, President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia, President Boris Tadic of Serbia, and the leader of Ukraine’s Party of Regions, Viktor Yanukovich.

After the completion of the requiem service in the Cathedral of the Savior, the clergy carried the coffin covered with a green Patriarchal Mantle out of the building and then took it around the cathedral to the accompaniment of tolling bells. Nuns walking ahead of the procession strewed the road with white roses, the late Patriarch’s most loved flowers.

Several thousand believers gathered near the cathedral to bid final farewell to the supreme hierarch of the Church.

After that, the coffin was placed on a hearse and a cortege of cars left for the Epiphany Cathedral, located in another part of Moscow’s center.

Crowds of people awaited the arrival of the cortege there. As the police had sealed off the area adjoining the building, people stood on the other side of the street. Many of them, too, had bouquets of white roses in their hands.

As the cortege arrived, Church hierarchs carried the coffin with Alexy II’s body on their arms into the cathedral, after which the last requiem lity /a service of entreaties for the dead/ was chanted.

Alexy II was buried in a special sepulcher dug out under the floor of the cathedral’s side-chapel of Annunciation.

The Epiphany Cathedral, one of the largest and highly popular churches in Moscow, had a special part in Alexy II’s life. It was there that his enthronement to the Office of the Patriarch took place June 10, 1990.

A plate placed above his tomb has an inscription reading: “The Holy Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Alexy II. May God recall your enlightened rule in His Heavenly Kingdom.”

Public access to the grave will be open as of Wednesday.

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13362512&PageNum=0