THE RUSSIAN CHURCH ON DARU STREET HAS BEEN SEQUESTERED

The Soviets want to obtain the right to dispose of it and have filed a lawsuit for this purpose.
They are said to intend to set up their nationals' stands there at the decorative arts exhibition to be held in the spring of 1925.
The Russian church on Daru Street has just been sequestered, pending a civil court ruling on the allocation of the premises and property claimed by both the Soviet government and a parish council composed of the current Metropolitan and Russians residing in Paris.

The Russian church on Daru Street has just been sequestrated, with the courts having to rule on its destination. Two groups are currently trying to acquire the use of the building and the objects it contains.

The first is made up of Russians residing in Paris and other Bolsheviks. They base their claims on the fact that the church remains private property of the Russian colony in Paris, because it was built thanks to the generosity of Nicholas II and the Russians in Paris.

Now, Mr. Maklakoff, Kerensky's ambassador to the French government, considered accredited until recently, handed over the church to the parish council last year. The council hastened to set up, based on French law, a religious association that is the regular owner of "the buildings and objects necessary for the exercise of worship".

Of course, the Soviet government is demanding the nationalization of this church and its property, as it did for the Berlin church, which was transformed into offices, for the Vienna church and the Rome church. Copenhagen alone has kept its Russian church, on a judicial decision of the civil court.

The Russian government would like to expel Metropolitan Eulogius, whom it considers a formidable adversary. If the Metropolitan and his parish council, composed in particular of Mr. Kokolzoll, Mr. Kovalesky, Mr. Tatitchoff, etc., were obliged to hand over the church to the Soviet representative, they would not, however, be deprived of a place of asylum for their worship. Indeed, the church of the German Lutheran mission on the rue de Crimée, sequestered since 1914, has just been bought by a committee of American Protestants led by Mr. Motth. This church will take the name of Saint-Sergé church. Religious ceremonies would be celebrated there on the first floor, while the ground floor would serve as premises for an ecclesiastical, Orthodox academy, comprising classrooms and a seminary.

As for the church on Rue Daru, in the event of a handover to the Russian government, it would perhaps be entrusted to a bishop who came from Russia and rallied to his government, but it is also possible that it would become an annex of the Soviet embassy and provisionally, because of its architectural value, entrusted to the official Russian organizing committee of the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts of 1925. As there is very little time left for the Russian exhibitors, invited to this great event, to build the spacious premises they need, a ready-made building could thus be intended for them. The only drawback would be the distance from the whole of the Exhibition, but this difficulty does not seem sufficient to postpone the project.
We will soon know which solution the Russian government has preferred.

CHARLES D'AVRON.