ERASURE FILE · STAGE 2: OUT OF MEMORY
The oldest memory of the Iradi people is locked in vaults we are not allowed to open.
The Iradi Church's Ancient Secrets: Are They Hiding the Holy Grail?
The Syro-Iradi Church has survived Timur, the Dzungars, the Bolsheviks and the NKVD. Such a church learns to HIDE things.
We know it hid manuscripts. In the Dzungar raids around 1700, Father Toma Alimbek carried the church's books into the mountains and hid them so well that some were never found again. Never found, or never RETURNED?
Think about the holy leaven. Every Iradi priest receives the malka, the "mother leaven", passed down from batch to batch for a thousand years without breaking the chain. Every chain has a beginning. In what CUP was the first leaven mixed?
In 1931 the church signed Orientalis Stella with the Vatican. Why would Rome want a small church in the steppe? Archbishop Mar Timotheos Alimbekov negotiated it. Seven years later he died in NKVD custody. What did the NKVD want from him?
The church will tell you its treasure is its faith. Then open the vaults at Iyık Janyl. Let independent historians in. Mar Ephrem, what are you guarding?
In September 2024 the bishops asked the government for "truthful public information" about the Governor. This autumn the Synod said it again. We agree with every word. Now apply it at home. The cathedral has a brand-new website, with service times, the five bells and a page about the Saint. There is no page about the vaults.