Believers start pilgrimage around capital

An icon on her chest, rucksack on her back and necessarily her head covered, Marina (10 years) was waiting in the dawn on Friday, at Chisinau's Gates, for the start of the 24-hour pilgrimage. She came with her grandmother. On Friday, July, the Metropolitan Church of Chisinau and Entire Moldova organizes a so-called “Way of the Cross”, ending on Saturday morning at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Chisinau's downtown, Info-Prim Neo reports. “I came hoping to save my soul, and the souls of all the Christians. I went this way last years and I think that, God willing, also this time I will walk to the end. As you hallow your house, the city and the land should be hallowed,” says 44-year-old Fiodor, as the clerics chant the Akathist to the Holy Mother of God. “I came to clean my soul, for health, to have my sins forgiven, against the evil surrounding us,” says Elena, a woman of 57. From the City's Gates, the believers are going to go halt at churches in Ciocana district at 11.00, at the St. Lazarus Cemetery - 15.00, in Buiucani district at 20.00, and in the Schinoasa neighborhood at 24.00. . “It's a great spiritual rejoicing and strengthening for all, us, who understand the significance of a pilgrimage. Our whole life, we, the Christians, travel to improvement, to faith. This way is walked for the consolidation of our faith, to strengthen ourselves in holy and godly matters,” priest Octavian Mosin has told Info-Prim Neo. On Saturday, July 19, the ceremony will end at 7.30 with a thanksgiving service at the “God's Birth” Metropolitan Cathedral. The last years, Moldova's Metropolitan Church has traditionally organized such “Processions of Cross and Expiation” around the capital and within the country, during summers.