Question of the day: how many churches does Moscow need?

There is another excitement in Russian social networks related to Patriarch Kirill's statement that in addition to the long-promised 200 Orthodox churches in Moscow, even more need to be built. "Nowhere in the world, in any city, especially in any capital, are 200 Christian churches being built today. And we realize that 200 is not enough, and there are already plans to build more. Why? Yes, because the people need it," said the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

However, as Novye Izvestia has already reported, it turns out that Russians are not too eager to visit existing temples: as it turned out, they are half-empty even during the Christmas service. It was defended by less than 1% of the inhabitants of the supposedly Orthodox country. Where is more? And most importantly – why? Journalist Nikolai Mitrokhin reassures the public in his blog:

"Citizens, calm down. The pace of construction of new churches in Moscow is lower than in the 1990s and early 2000s, when there was no such program. Moreover, it has failed successfully, now they are too lazy to pull out their old statements, but 200 were supposed to be built by 2020, it seems that 132 of them have been built now, forty more are under construction, there is not even a reserve for the rest. In total, 9 new churches were built last year according to his own data, and their size is not diplomatically specified.

Simply put, the program was supposed to develop temple construction at an accelerated pace, but in practice, all temples under construction began to be recorded in it, and the pace dropped by half. At the same time, the population is growing rapidly in Moscow, new territories with an area almost the size of old Moscow have been annexed to Moscow, new residential complexes are being built there, etc.

Really temples in Moscow, especially on the outskirts, well, not really. There is no way to compare it with Kiev, and especially with Lviv, where, it seems, all the bald spots between high-rise buildings were built up with temples twenty years ago.

Therefore, it seems to me that we should worry about something else - that no one hears the voices of Muslims, Protestants and other confessions, of which there are also many in Moscow, but they have temples for prayer - one can count with one finger. And the locals, who are not enthusiastic about the construction of Orthodox churches, will never agree on the construction of a mosque or a Protestant prayer house. And the authorities do not support it.

So the key problem here is the dominant anti-religious xenophobia, especially towards those who are minorities. And when Russian liberals want it to be like in Europe or like in the USA, they do not know or do not know that there are several churches of different denominations on each more or less long street, and the slogan "all priests are thieves and deceivers" is somehow not too supported by the mainstream and is not particularly popular even in leftist circles..."