Kramnik marries French journalist in Paris Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky

From InterfaxReligion.com February 05: The World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik married the Le Figaro journalist Marie-Laure Germon at the church wedding ceremony in Paris Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky, the primatial see of the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe under the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

However Kramnik’s spouse did not follow her husband into the Orthodox faith and remained Protestant, the Izvestia periodical said on Monday.

‘In Moscow they would have demanded her conversion into the Orthodoxy before the wedding ceremony. But we take things like that easier,’ the cathedral’s rector Archpriest Anatoly Rakovich told Izvestia.

Ms. Germon and Mr. Kramnik were not the first Russian-French couple to marry in the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Rue Daru. Pablo Picasso married the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova there in 1918. Mstislav Rostropovich’s daughters had their weddings in the same cathedral too.

We wish Vladimir and Marie-Laure a long and happy life together.

This article can be found at http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=2557