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I wish to extend my warmest greetings to all those celebrating the 500^th anniversary of the founding of the Holy Trinity-Antonievo-Siysky Monastery.

Founded by St. Anthony of Siya in the reign of Vasilii III and greatly expanded during the reigns of the last rulers of the Riurikovich dynasty, the Siisky Monastery also enjoys a special historical relationship with our House.  In the inscrutable ways of Divine Providence, the monastery became not a dark and forbidding prison for our ancestor, the future Patriarch Filaret (Romanoff), who had been slandered and unjustly exiled to the monastery, but rather a salvific and welcoming refuge.  

For four centuries the Antoniev Monastery was, and is now again, after its reopening in 1992, a spiritual stronghold of the Russian North and of our entire nation.  Its unique and magnificent beauty, the unity of its brethren, and its ancient traditions of social and cultural service—all create an atmosphere of living Faith, Hope and Love, spiritual qualities which all Christians all called to acquire.

The limitations brought on us all by the coronavirus pandemic do not permit me to participate in the celebration of the half-millennium anniversary of the monastery in the way I had hoped. But nothing can limit our most important purpose: to pray fervently to God, and to strive to support each other in every way possible.

I believe that, through the collective efforts of the Holy Church, government authorities, scholars, restoration specialists, artists, volunteers, benefactors, and donors, the ancient Siisky monastery will one day soon be fully restored to its former glory.

My son and heir, Grand Duke George of Russia, joins me in congratulating you all on this important historic occasion.

May the Lord God, through the prayers of His Most Pure Mother and St. Anthony, bless and keep you all!

MARIA

Madrid

6 August 2020