(Vyatsky Center)
A massive statue of Jesus Christ could soon be erected in a Russian city on a site once designated for a monument of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Russian Communist Party.
According to blueprints made public by Vyatsky Posad, a Russian Orthodox Christian center, the statue is expected to be 125 feet high – the same height as the Christ the Redeemer monument in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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According to Religion News Service, the statue will stand on top of a hill in Vladivostok, the largest city in far eastern Russia, looking east over the Pacific Ocean.
RNS reported Soviet authorities issued orders for the construction of a 98-foot-high bronze statue of Lenin at the site nearly 50 years ago. Another statue, of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, was expected to be built on a neighboring hill but plans were repeatedly postponed and eventually scrapped in 1990.
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In an interview with a Russian radio station, Gennady Tsurkov, the head of the Vyatsky Posad center, said an influential monk who is the spiritual adviser to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church inspired the Jesus statue to come about.
“He really wants to put up a statue of Jesus Christ as a protector of our Russia from the east,” Tsurkov said. The total cost has not been finalized. Private investors would fund the construction of the statue, according to Tsurkov.
The regional governor, Oleg Kozhemyako, said a small chapel that could hold up to 30 people would be built near the statue.
According to RNS, reaction to the statue has been mostly negative online.
“Is there nothing else for us to spend our money on?” someone wrote on a local forum. “We’d be better off spending the money on hospitals, schools, roads …”
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The construction of a giant statue of Christ in the Russian port city would also represent Russia’s startling transformation from an officially atheist state in the Soviet era, which ended in 1991, to a current Christian-majority country, according to RNS.
The statue has not yet been approved by the Russian Orthodox Church.
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