MOSCOW -- About 15,000 worshippers crowded into the courtyard of the golden domed Danilov Monastery Sunday for a special outdoor service marking 1,000 years of Russian Orthodox Christianity.
With police in bright blue uniforms politely funnelling the crowds, the believers filed into the 700-year-old monastery that was given back to the Russian Orthodox Church last year after being used for decades as a warehouse.
'We estimate that there were 15,000' people in the congregation summoned by the church bells to worship, said Aleksei Ryzyanin, a church official.
Many of the Russians stood for the entire four-hour liturgy sung in the open air on a day that began with rain and gave way to sunshine by the time the service ended at 2 p.m.
The service was held in an courtyard that is surrounding by buildings, including churches, all of which were too small to accommodate the crowd.
Patriarch Pimen, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, led the service and blessed the congregation as part of a heritage that exceeds many times the 70-year history of Communist rule in the Soviet Union.
'I want to congratulate you on this festive day of ours, on the 1,000th anniversary of Christianity in Russia,' Pimen said. 'May God bless you with health and strength so that you always belong to the Russian Orthodox Church.'
Joining the celebration were eight cardinals from the Roman Catholic Church in purple robes led by Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli and Cardinal John O'Connor, archbishop of New York.
'The events of 1,000 years ago put your state on a par with the states of that time, brought you close to European culture, Casaroli said, recalling the baptism of the ancient kingdom of Rus in 988.
The Vatican delegation was the most high-ranking to appear on Russian soil, although Russian church officials had hoped Pope John Paul II might attend. The pontiff has been critical of Soviet treatment of Catholics in Poland and Lithuania.
Metropolitian Filaret of Minsk and Byelorrussia, the second highest ranking Russian Orthodox churchman, hailed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in his message.
'We welcome with joy the thousands of signs of spiritual revival which are resounding in our country,' Filaret said. 'We fervently hail the process of perestroika which is called to correct the negative consequences of the past.'
Gorbachev's reforms returned 18 places of worship last year and 80 this year to the Russian Orthodox Church after years of desecration and demolition of the parish churches whose golden domed cupolas once dotted the countryside.
On the eve of the Communist Revolution in 1917, there were 70,000 churches in a country known as 'Holy Russia.' By the time Gorbachev came to power in March 1985, only 7,000 churches were open for worship.
The white-walled Danilov Monastery compound, which was visited by President Reagan during the recent Moscow summit, was given back to the patriarch by Gorbachev as part of his liberal trend for respect of religion in the avowedly atheistic Soviet Union.
The celebrations began last Saturday in the most public acceptance of the church since World War II when dictator Josef Stalin enlisted its support after years of trying to extinguish religion condemned as a vestige of bourgeois society. No Communist Party official attended Sunday's service.
