Sochi’s Olympic Cathedral May Be Its Holiest White Elephant

Wedged between railroad tracks and a freeway overpass, the Cathedral of the Holy Face of Christ the Savior has yet to find a congregation

By Simon Shuster / Sochi @shustryFeb. 16, 20146 Comments

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Maxim Shemetov / Reuters

Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends the Orthodox Christmas service at the Cathedral of the Holy Face of Christ the Savior in the Russian city of Sochi on Jan. 7, 2014

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On Jan. 7, exactly a month before the Winter Games in Sochi began, Russian President Vladimir Putin stopped by the host city’s new cathedral to attend Orthodox Christmas mass. It seemed like a symbolic moment. In record time, Putin’s government had built an entire Olympic city, complete with stadiums, hotels, railroads and freeways, on a patch of swamp in Sochi’s suburbs. It was Putin’s little miracle, and what better place and time to celebrate than on Orthodox Christmas in Sochi’s new church? There were just a couple of problems.
The ornate Cathedral of the Holy Face of Christ the Savior, built mostly in the byzantine style, was still under construction at the time. It had been consecrated only a few days earlier, before the altar had been assembled. And then there was the issue of its location. Wedged between railroad tracks and a freeway overpass, the church was nearly impossible for any locals to approach by foot without jumping fences and running across several lanes of traffic. So people had to be bussed in to stand behind Putin and his key Olympic managers during the Christmas mass. With that, the cathedral served its first essential function — a photo opportunity for Putin. But whom it will serve when the Olympics leave town is so far a bit of a mystery.
“There’s an old Russian tradition that when you make a conquest of land, the first thing you do, before building a fort or a bathhouse, is build a church on top of it,” says Vasily Gromov, an amateur historian and restorer of Orthodox churches in the region of Krasnodar, which includes Sochi. “But this one doesn’t make much sense.”
On the second Sunday of the Olympics, Gromov, who is 76, came early to the evening mass to voice some concerns to the priests. How could they put such a massive cathedral in a place where people can’t get to it? “I circled around for an hour before I figured out how to get here,” says Gromov. “There are fences and freeways everywhere,” he says. “It’s like a maze!” So he was not surprised to see the cathedral nearly deserted during the long evening service, with never more than a dozen parishioners at a time, most of them Olympic tourists. “And who’s going to come here when the Games are over?” Gromov asks.

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