Orthodox Church still split over executed tsar’s remains

moscow: Next week’s centenary of the execution of Russia’s last tsar has reignited a long-running conflict between the state and the Russian Orthodox Church over what to do with the murdered royal family’s remains.

Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on Monday will lead a procession marking 100 years since the Bolsheviks shot dead tsar Nicholas II and his family after he abdicated.

But the Church – dominated by hardliners – is still divided over the authenticity of the remains of the family, whose members were all sainted in 2000.

Bolshevik forces shot Nicholas, his German-born wife Alexandra and their five children along with a maid, cook, valet and doctor in 1918, in the aftermath of the revolution.

In 1998, then-president Boris Yeltsin’s government buried bone fragments, first found in 1979, that were identified as those of Nicholas, his wife and three of their daughters. But 20 years later, the Church still refuses to accept DNA tests confirming their authenticity.

It also does not recognise the remains of the tsar’s other children Alexei and Maria, whose bodies were separated from the others and found in 2007. The government has failed to reach an agreement with the Church on burying them.

Instead, the Church maintains that the Bolsheviks put the burnt bodies of their 11 victims in a pit in a forest in the Urals region, where the Church has built a large monastery complex.

But ahead of the centenary, some Russian newspapers are asking when Patriarch Kirill will finally recognise the remains. In 1998, the late Patriarch Alexei snubbed a state funeral for Nicholas II’s bones in Saint Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress. He sent a bishop to bury them as “unknown remains” instead.

Officially, the Patriarchate said there was not enough evidence to accept DNA test results and accused the government of sidelining the Church.

“Nobody really knows what happened because everyone who was involved is no longer here,” said Ksenia Luchenko, an expert on the Russian Orthodox Church.