Yet more material preparation for the Consecration of Russia?

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=18596

If these stories continue to multiply (which I think, and hope, that they will) I’m going to have to start numbering them (there are only so many permutations of ‘More/Yet more/Still more material preparation …’, I suspect!). Yesterday’s CathNews reported on a

bold experiment: the Russian Orthodox Church's first seminary outside the former Soviet Union[*].

Officially launched in November, the small Paris-area school nurses big ambitions: to train a new generation of Orthodox priests capable of serving Russia's growing Diaspora. Even more, the school hopes to foster exchanges between Europe's Christian East and West; and, more specifically, help nurture warming ties between Moscow and the Vatican.

"The Russian Orthodox Church needs good specialists who know foreign languages and the life of Christian churches in the West and how they face secularization," said the Rev. Alexander Siniakov, the seminary's affable young director, who is also the Russian church's point person for interchurch relations in France.

"Our seminary," he added, "is sort of a bridge between the Western Christian culture and the Eastern Orthodox one." […]
[my emphasis]

*One Geoff Halton wrote the following in the combox at that news article:

The statement that it is the first Russian Orthodox Seminary outside of former Soviet Union is not necessarily correct. If it means since the fall of the USSR, then this is correct, otherwise the Russian Orthodox seminary in Jordonville in upstate New York takes that prize which was founded from those who fled the rise of communism.

Related (to the Consecration of Russia) coverage: Here is a link to an article by Mr. Christopher Ferrara (it mentions, among other things, the botched 1984 ‘consecration’ and the curious “entrustment” ceremony of 2000):

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29582

And here’s another related story by Mr. Ferrara:

http://www.angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=335545&sid=a4e4b35734e1445f52aab8a5d82abed2

See also my recent posts on a Holy-See-dependent charity sponsoring the Russian schism and this more recent post. And I see at the S.S.P.X. District of Australia home-page that “[t]here are 75 days left to dedicate your Rosaries for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady!” And H.H. The Pope is due to visit Fatima in May …

Reginaldvs Cantvar
8.I.2010