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NYTimes: Italian City Tied to Russia by a Revered Saint Feels the Sting of War in Ukraine

The port of Bari holds relics venerated by Orthodox Christians throughout the former Soviet bloc. Today it is also home to a spillover of tensions from Russia’s invasion.

BARI, Italy — As the Orthodox chants in Russian and the Ukrainian bishop’s voice echoed in the ancient crypt, the faithful lowered their scarf-wrapped heads to the marble floor, held candles over their Cyrillic prayer books or wept under low stone arches.

All had come to pray at the tomb of St. Nicholas, revered by Orthodox Christians throughout the former Soviet bloc, in the basilica named for him in the port city of Bari, on Italy’s southern coast. Though more than 1,000 miles from the conflict in Ukraine, and united in their veneration for the saint, the congregation of mostly women in long winter coats made for a strangely out-of-place diorama of all that binds and that is tearing apart their ancestral homelands.
A woman wearing the yellow and blue colors of Ukraine’s flag said she asked the saint for a miracle: to stop Russia’s invasion of her home country. A Belarusian woman nearby defended the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. So did the Serbian monk assisting the bishop in the prayers. The Russian faithful by the choir refused to assign blame for the war.
“It’s a sin what Putin is doing,” said Lali Bubashvili, 50, a woman from Georgia, a former Soviet republic, who sat on a back pew, recalling Russia’s invasion there. “Years ago we suffered the war. We know it’s a barbarous thing.”

The relics believed to be of St. Nicholas were brought from present-day Turkey by sailors 1,000 years ago, and his bones have been entombed in Bari ever since. Though the basilica that houses them is Roman Catholic, once a week it invites the Orthodox faithful to hold their own service using the crypt.

The presence of the relics has long made Bari an unusual linchpin in relations between Italy and Russia and between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches.

In 2007, Mr. Putin himself came to Bari and knelt in front of St. Nicholas’s tomb, just as the faithful did during the prayer for peace. In 2009, Italy returned ownership to Russia of an Orthodox church named after St. Nicholas to fortify ties with Moscow.
Years earlier, Mr. Putin donated a statue of the saint that stands in the square in front of the basilica, along with a signed plaque honoring “friendship and cooperation” that is dedicated to “the citizens of Bari.”
Italian City Tied to Russia by a Revered Saint Feels the Sting of War in Ukraine - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
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But Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has now made the ancient crypt, and the city around it, an unexpected satellite for the pain and bitterness of the conflict. On the streets of Bari, the war has caused tensions between Ukrainian and Russian residents and headaches for local politicians.
Local people recently petitioned for the removal of the plaque bearing Mr. Putin’s dedication. Though Bari’s mayor, Antonio Decaro, brought yellow and blue flowers last month to the foot of the statue of St. Nicholas in sympathy with Ukraine, he has opposed removing the dedication, saying that to do so would cancel a piece of history.
“They won’t take the Putin sign down,” said Inna Honcharenko, 38, from Vinnytsia near Kyiv, as she directed volunteers collecting donations for Ukraine in another part of town. “There’s too much the hand of Russia here.”
Italian City Tied to Russia by a Revered Saint Feels the Sting of War in Ukraine - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

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