Clergyman says church has vanished

A church has vanished from the Russian village where it stood for almost 200 years, the local diocese said yesterday.

The Church of Christ's Resurrection, in the central Russian village of Komarovo, was built in 1809 but in early October someone took it away brick by brick, Father Vitaly a spokesman for the local Russian Orthodox Church said.

We have sent a letter to local prosecutors," he said. "Who exactly did this, the investigation will show."

The church was in an isolated area only occasionally visited by clergymen, so the disappearance was not immediately noticed.

Komarovo is in the Ivanovo region, about 300 km (186.4 miles) north-east of Moscow. The church was not in use but clergy had been considering resuming services there, the Ivanovo-Voznesenskaya and Kineshemskaya diocese said in a statement on its Internet site.

A survey of the large, two-storey church a few months ago found that it was structurally sound, but now all that remains are the foundations and sections of walls, the statement said. Thieves routinely make off with church property in rural Russia, where unemployment, petty crime and alcoholism are widespread.