A monument to Russian Orthodoxy's sitting high priest

Patriarch Kirill is still quite alive, but that’s not stopping the Russian Orthodox Church from erecting a monument to its sitting high priest in Moscow. The monument will appear near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and Kirill’s statue will be one of 16 dedicated to the church’s patriarchs over the years.

Mayor Sergey Sobyanin reportedly approved the monuments in early December. Three of these statues (to patriarchs Job, Hermogenes, and Tikhon) already appeared outside the cathedral in late November. The rest of the monuments — two-meter (6.5-foot) tall bronze sculptures on pedestals — will be installed by the end of 2018. The sculptures are being created by Salavat Chtcherbakov.

• Chtcherbakov is the artist behind a recent monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov, where he accidentally included an image of an automatic weapon designed by German designer Hugo Schmeisser. Chtcherbakov later admitted his mistake and the German gun was removed.