Orthodox faithful in Poland greet Russian Patriarch

Thousands of Orthodox Poles on Saturday greeted Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in Bialystok, eastern Poland, on the third day of his historic visit to the deeply Catholic country. "This is a very important moment for us," said Anna Musiuk, who came with her two children and husband to greet the patriarch at the city's Holy Ghost cathedral, the largest Orthodox church in Poland. "He is the head of a church with which we have good contacts and on a human level, he's a good man, with a good heart," she added. At the cathedral, Kirill led prayers and called upon Orthodox faithful to preserve Christian values in their everyday lives. "All the changes in life lead us to lose sight of our real goals. If we want to lead a complete life, everything which appears important, in reality has very little value," the patriarch declared before heading into the crowd to shake hands and offer blessings. Eastern Poland, along the border with Belarus, is home to the country's largest community of Orthodox, who overall are a minority numbering around 500,000 of the predominantly Roman Catholic population of 38.2 million. "We're very happy that people are taking notice that we, as Orthodox faithful, exist. "In Poland, there is very little focus on the Orthodox Church. We're a minority, just a small percent of all believers, but we exist, we have children and organisations -- we're real Christians," Musiuk added. From Bialystok, Kirill travelled on to Suprasl to visit the oldest Orthodox monastery in Poland dating from the 16th century. Later in the day he visited nearby Hajnowka before celebrating mass for some 15,000 Orthodox faithful from Poland, Belarus and Ukraine at the holy mountain of Grabarka -- a revered site for the Orthodox where miracles are believed to have occurred. On August 16 and 17 each year thousands of Orthodox pilgrims pray through the night at the site for the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ, celebrating a biblical account of a miracle. Many encircle an Orthodox chapel at the top of the mountain on their knees in a gesture of piety and gratitude. Faithful also gather at a spring reputed to work miracles to drink its water and fill up bottles to take home. Before leaving faithful also erect crosses they bring with them on the mountain, creating a veritable crucifix forest. Legend has it that when cholera broke out in 1710 in the nearby village of Siemiatycze, residents who fled to mount Grabarka and drank from the spring there survived. They later built a church and a convent at the site to mark the apparent miracle. Kirill is expected to say mass once again Sunday morning in Grabarka before returning to Moscow in the afternoon. On Friday in Warsaw, Kirill and leaders of Poland's Roman Catholic Church signed an unprecedented appeal for mutual forgiveness in an effort to put centuries of bloody history behind them and also took a robust stand against the secularisation of public life. But the signature of the landmark document came on a day when a Moscow court sparked an outcry by sending Russian punk rockers Pussy Riot to jail for two years for their protest against President Vladimir Putin in Russia's main Orthodox cathedral. Relations between Russian Orthodox church fathers and the Kremlin are known to be close.