Penza, 23 July 2014. PenzaNews. The region's first crisis center for women and children in difficult situations was opened at Krasnaya Gorka Street, 24, in Penza on Wednesday, July 23. The renovated building that previously housed a kindergarten can currently give shelter to pregnant women and women with children, who for various reasons cannot solve their problems on their own.

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The center will provide legal and psychological counseling.

Also, women will have an opportunity to study seam-stressing or hairdressing while their children are under the supervision of tutors.

Among the honorary guests of the opening ceremony was Bishop Panteleimon of Orekhovo-Zuevo, who is also the Vicar of His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia and the chairman of the Synodal Department for Church Charity and Social Service.

He noted that the center was created to help people who do not know the joy of family life.

“There are no incubators in which children can be raised without a father and mother. There were some attempts to create children's homes, but the result was disastrous. A man cannot live without a family,” Bishop Panteleimon said.

He added that in the modern society, there are often situations in which a woman who bore a child needs a special shelter.

“It is terrible to imagine when relatives — the child's father, the mother's parents — drive her away, refuse to accept the child's existence, and wish the child was not born at all,” he said.

Bishop Panteleimon urged the audience to unite their efforts to educate young people, the foundation of which will be preparing boys and girls for marriage.

Congratulating the residents on the opening of the center, Bishop Seraphim of Penza and Nizhnelomovsk noted the great contribution of Anna Kuznetsova, director of the fund for family, motherhood and childhood support “Pokrov,” and presented her with the medal “For the good deeds.”

“Thank God that we have such active women who are an example of a happy family,” Bishop Seraphim said.

In her turn, Anna Kuznetsova expressed hope that the center, built in Penza, will be another step towards the establishment of a comprehensive system of assistance for single mothers and families in crisis.