His Holiness Patriarch Kirill approved of a list of churches requiring restoration works, which will be subsidized by the Moscow city budget in 2022. 

The Moscow city government subsidizes restoration works on churches that are entered on the Cultural Heritage list and are not the property of the Russian Orthodox Church, which can only use these buildings for religious purposes.

“This program was launched in 2012," said Ekaterina Inasaridze, Head of the restoration and renovation program at the financial and economic department of the Moscow Patriarchate. “The subsidies are allocated on an annual basis and must be expended within a twelve month period.”

Each year, as part of this program, the Financial and Economic Department compiles a list of locations which are used by (but not owned by) the Russian Orthodox Church, and which require restoration works to be done. The list is then submitted to Patriarch Kirill for approval. After it has been approved, it is then directed to the department of Cultural heritage in the Moscow City government.

This year, the list includes seven churches which were built in Moscow and its suburbs in the 17th-19th centuries.

Some of the oldest are the Church of St. Nicholas in Podkopay from the 17th-18th centuries, and the Church of Our Lady of the Sign At Peter’s Gates, built from 1679-1680.