On September 7, 2025, a large-scale procession dedicated to the Council of Moscow Saints was held in the Russian capital, headed personally by Russian Patriarch Kirill. The procession was also conceived as a central event for the secular holiday of Moscow Day, and this year the two holidays coincided.
The procession started from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and reached the Novodevichy Stavropegial Monastery – this is a new route, because neither in modern times nor in the past have liturgical processions passed along it. Nevertheless, the patriarch called the route historical and said that “a remarkable spiritual tradition interrupted by the God-fighters, who briefly enslaved our country,” is being revived. The route was seven kilometers, and the church media did not fail to emphasize the physical endurance of the patriarch against the background of rumors about his deteriorating health: “The patriarch showed excellent physical shape,” Orthodox-patriotic sources write. However, the patriarch covered most of the route by car. About 40,000 believers from all parishes of the capital took part in the event. A similar procession of this scale has not been held in the Russian capital for ten years. The last one took place in 2015, when more than 10,000 people, led by the patriarch, walked from the Kremlin to the Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery, carrying the icon of St. Peter, the Moscow Wonderworker (the saint lived in 13-14 AD and was the Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia; in 1325 he transferred the seat of the metropolitanate from Kiev to Moscow, ed.). At that time, the event was dedicated to the 700th anniversary of the beginning of the saint’s ministry in Moscow and the founding of the Vysoko-Petrovskaya monastery.
Official data is for 34 to 40,000 participants in the Moscow “crusade”, but there is no shortage of hyperbole from Orthodox-patriotic sources about 100 and even 150,000 people participating. The latter are thus arguing with the statistics, according to which 250,000 Muslims gathered in Moscow for Kurban Bayram in June of that year, with 80,000 praying in the central mosque. The patriarch also hinted that the event had such a purpose, noting in his sermon before it began that the procession was intended “as a testimony to the fact that Moscow is truly the Orthodox capital of our fatherland… It is a city that will not give up its Christian heritage. This is the historical truth and justice that we, the participants in the procession, recall and affirm with it.”
But the main message of the procession was heard in the form of a prayer call, approved by the patriarch and loudly pronounced by the archdeacon: “We pray for the president of our country, Russia, Vladimir Vladimirovich, that from heaven he may be given… to govern our country well, to instill peace and order in it.”
As early as August 22, the order was posted in Moscow parishes: “The chairmen of Moscow churches must ensure the participation of no less than 30 laypeople from each parish, and from those with many clergy (where more than one priest serves), metoses and stavropegic monasteries — no less than 50 laypeople.”
