(12 Jan 2017) In the latest scandal involving the powerful Russian Orthodox Church, authorities in St. Petersburg on Thursday defended a controversial decision to give a city landmark cathedral to the church.
Museum experts and locals in Russia's former imperial capital were rattled by the governor's announcement this week that he was transferring St. Isaac's Cathedral to the church.
An online petition against the decision had tens of thousands of signatures by Thursday.
The neoclassical church, completed in the 19th century, has been an important museum since Russia's 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and is now the city's third most visited site.
Some museum experts are concerned that the Orthodox Church will neglect its exhibits, which include a rare Foucault pendulum.
Mikhail Mokretsov, deputy governor of Russia's second-largest city, on Thursday vowed that the city hall will make sure that tourists get unfettered access to the site.
He said the city will retain its ownership of the cathedral and will shoulder maintenance costs while the church will get operational rights.
The Church says that visitors will not even notice the difference when the church begins to operate St. Isaac's.
But opposition St. Petersburg legislative council deputy Boris Vishnevsky said the move meant taxpayers were forking out for the Russian Orthodox Church to take 'donations', that were in turn tax-free.
"Why do they have to pay for the maintenance of a cathedral which will belong to the Russian Orthodox Church?", he said.
Although St. Isaac's was built as an Orthodox cathedral, it has always owned by the government except for a brief period.
Opposition lawmakers and activists plan to protest on Friday against the decision, which they see as part of a growing trend toward social conservatism in Russia.
The Russian Orthodox Church has played an active part in President Vladimir Putin's efforts to consolidate Russian society by appealing to traditional values as opposed to Western liberalism.
The church's attempts to expand its influence have sometimes caused controversy, however.
On Wednesday, a senior Orthodox cleric in Siberia, the Metropolitan of Novosibirsk, Tikhon, lashed out at the local opera and ballet theatre for staging the classic Christmas ballet, "The Nutcracker," which he insisted was based on an "occult subject."
In 2015, Tikhon protested against Wagner's opera "Tannhauser."
Several months later the Russian culture minister fired the theatre's director and the opera was removed from the theatre's repertoire.

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