The Church won’t demand its former treasures back from museums

The Christian Church doesn’t intend to ask the Russian museums to return the treasures, exempted from it after the revolution of 1917, the metropolitan of Ufa and Sterlitamac Nikon stated during his last press-conference, held by the news agency “Bashinform”, making comments upon the federal law N 327 “Assignation of state or municipal property to religious organizations”.

In accordance with this law all facilities and other either state or municipal property, earlier belonging to religious organizations, have to be returned, but this law doesn’t cover museum exhibits.

At the same time the metropolitan Nikon said that the Christian eparchy in Bashkortostan would like nonetheless to return some things from the local museums, if not forever but at least for temporary use. The matter is the religious subjects, kept by the museums, but which can be used in the service, such as various sacred vessels, used in Eucharist.

“I saw these vessels in our museums” – Nikon mentioned – “We’d like to get these things back at least for temporary use but the problem of such assignation is too complicated and can be solved only with the help of the Russian Ministry for culture”.