Word: nice
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...purchased half a century earlier. Initially intended as a place of worship for the Russian aristocrats and industrialists who flocked to the Côte d'Azur before the 1917 Russian Revolution, the cathedral became a spiritual and cultural focal point for the mass of exiles who fled to Nice during the Soviet era. Since the fall of communism nearly 19 years ago, the so-called white Russian community and its offspring have been joined by Russian jet-setters who've grown extremely wealthy under the country's current leadership and bought pricey mansions in Nice to use as their...
...every year, the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas has represented a slice of Mother Russia on the shores of the Mediterranean. And that's exactly the logic the Russian government used to win a court case in France on Jan. 20 that recognized Moscow's ownership of the church. The Nice Russian Orthodox Cultural Association (ACOR), which managed the church under a 99-year lease it signed with the czarist regime in 1909, had maintained that it effectively inherited the cathedral when Russia's royal family was executed during the revolution. But the court upheld the Russian government's position that...
...tradition that goes back to Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, in which political leaders used symbols of Russian grandeur - including an entirely submissive church - to create greater support for the regime," says Jean Gueit, rector of the Nice cathedral. "Russian society has been so disoriented and adrift following the changes of the past 20 years that Putin is playing the old nationalist game to snap people out of it by responding to simplistic messages and emotions. Part of that is rebuilding the equally shattered Russian Orthodox Church and help it snatch up all these parishes abroad...
...drive isn't just about real estate and nationalism. Critics say the government is also trying to bring back into the fold the congregations that broke with the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet era to join a rival Orthodox branch, the Patriarchate of Constantinople - as the faithful in Nice did in 1931. Many of these overseas congregations have started to restore their ties to the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years, though Gueit says this is only in response to the government's putting the squeeze on their churches...
...Nice congregation isn't planning to rejoin the Russian church anytime soon. In fact, Gueit says the congregation wants to stake out an independent, pan-Orthodox position by breaking with the Constantinople Patriarchate too. He hopes to then attract other congregations to his nonaligned movement - whether he has a cathedral to use as his base...