"We [the Church and the Russian Rail] share many plans-to revive itinerant chapel cars, and together engage in charity to encourage the Church flock, and help abandoned children and other people in a plight," said Mr. Fadeyev.
The Russian Rail will also assist the Church in missionary works, arrange pilgrimages, and prevent circulation of information that may undermine basic morals.
A partnership contract the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Rail Co. signed, April last, envisages edifying books and periodicals circulated in long-distance trains. The arrangement has already got going.
Russian railroads received their first chapel cars as long ago as 1999. They are constant presences on the Good Services, Charity and Mercy trains. Rail officers and priests together blueprint special itineraries on which those special trains make long stops in settlements that have no houses of worship. The chapel cars allow local people to attend common prayers, take the Holy Communion, baptize their babies, and receive other sacraments.
The relics of two martyred saintly nuns-Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Sister Barbara-were ceded to Russia by the Church of Jerusalem for six months last year, and were taken for public worship across the vast country in one of such chapel cars.
