Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb in Sarov was an act of divine intervention, speaking after a liturgy at the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery in the Nizhny Novgorod region, where the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov are kept.
According to the patriarch, it was in these places, where the saint prayed, that "the shield of our homeland began to be forged." Scientists who worked in Sarov "created our Russian atomic bomb, which stopped the enemy's plans to destroy and enslave our Fatherland."
"So, through the labor of scientists, engineers, and workers who worked here, God's grace and mercy appeared over our country," the patriarch was quoted as saying by TASS. He added that it was "not by chance" that research was conducted in this particular place, and that the bomb's appearance saved the country from "terrible destruction, as a result of which neither the country nor the people might have remained."
Kirill also suggested that everything happened "including through the prayers of our venerable and God-bearing father Seraphim of Sarov." In his view, "the humble elder through his holiness" contributed to the fact that "our people and our country continue to exist."
Sarov is home to the Russian Federal Nuclear Center — the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics. This is not the first such statement by the patriarch: in 2023 he claimed that nuclear weapons were created "by ineffable divine providence," and in 2024 he urged Russians not to fear such weapons.