Thousands Line-up in Russia to See Ancient Religious Relic

THE DAILY STAR
By AFP

An Orthodox believer kisses the cross of St. Andrew the Apostle
 in the Kazan Cathedral in the Russia's second city of St. Petersburg

RUSSIA---Around 65,000 people have queued for hours in Saint Petersburg to see a religious relic brought from Greece, officials said Saturday, in the latest sign of the Russian Orthodox Church’s influence in post-Soviet Russia. The cross of Saint Andrew, which is said to be a relic of the X-shaped cross on which Andrew the Apostle was crucified, was placed in Saint Petersburg’s Kazan Cathedral Thursday after arriving from its historic home in Patras in Greece. In just the first days of its display, there were some 65,000 visitors and the numbers are increasing all the time, a representative of the fund which helped bring the cross to Russia told the RIA Novosti news agency. The cross has come from Greece as part of commemorations of the 1,025th anniversary of the Christianization of the medieval Slavic state of Rus. [link]