Penza, 11 October 2016. PenzaNews. Metropolitan of Nizhny Lomov and Penza Seraphim was surprised by the reaction of some individuals to the offer to install a monument to victims of repression on Sovetskaya square.

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“At the last conference, there occurred an idea to memorialize the victims of political repressions, to create a monument in Penza […]. I did not even imagine that this issue will cause this kind of resistance. During this year, there have been several one-man pickets and other actions against the monument installation,” he said during the roundtable “The role of the Russian Orthodox Church, society and the state in the preservation of the historical memory of the new martyrs and victims of the civil war and mass repression,” held as part of the similarly-named conference in the governor’s house of Penza on Tuesday, October 11.

The Metropolitan noted that the project is still under discussion, there have been taken no steps to implement the project so far.

“The only thing we did is the roundtable discussion with representatives of the city and regional authorities to express this idea. […] This was not a desire of the diocese, but of the descendants of the repressed people, who wanted to invest their money in the monument,” he said.

He urged everyone to express their views in a civilized manner adding that organizing pickets “looks really weird.”