“Where God is, there really is happiness”translated

On July 11, 2026, on the day of remembrance of the Venerable Sergius and Herman of Valaam, miracle workers, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Stauropegial Monastery. At the end of the service, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church addressed the believers with the First Hierarch’s word.

Your Eminences and Eminences! Dear fathers, brothers and sisters!

Usually, when visiting this holy monastery, I remember my first visit to it at a time when abomination and desolation reigned here, when huge locks hung on the doors of this holy church.

Here then there were unfortunate people, isolated from society only because they looked terrible. Not because they suffered from some kind of spiritual illness, which sometimes lead people into a state of madness, but because they were disabled. Many of them were war invalids, and their appearance was so ugly that the authorities of that time considered it impossible to create for them such living conditions that would be associated with communication with other people. The authorities were afraid that, looking at these disabled people, people would feel the whole horror of the war, the whole tragedy of our people, which...