Believers venerate her as the heavenly patron of the city, this was announced by Metropolitan Evgeniy of Verkhoturye and Yekaterinburg after the Divine Liturgy in the Holy Trinity Cathedral on December 7, the day when Orthodox believers celebrate the Day of the Great Martyr. Catalina was received with sincere joy.
The first official mention of the relics of Saint Catherine of Alexandria dates back to 1802, when the Order of Saint Augustine transferred them to one of the Italian churches. Then the relics ended up in the United States, and recently the Crimean head Sergei Aksyonov and his wife Elena bought a part of them and returned them to Russia. And now it has been donated to the Yekaterinburg diocese on behalf of the Crimean Community of Orthodox Believers. Crimean craftsmen also built an ark for relics.
“We accept this shrine with gratitude. We accept it as a blessing for our city, for it to grow, for the residents to be happy,” said Metropolitan of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye Evgeniy.
Despite the 30-degree frost, the believers carried the reliquary with the relics of Saint Catherine through the streets, the procession ended in the center of the city, in the chapel that bears the name of the heavenly patron saint of the capital of the Middle Urals. In this chapel the ark with the holy relics will be kept from now on.
