Czechs mark Sts Cyril and Methodius Day

Some 30,000 Czechs commemorated on Saturday the 1145th anniversary of the arrival of the Christian missionaries Cyril and Methodius. A public holiday in the Czech Republic, the anniversary was marked by the annual national pilgrimage to Velehrad, one of Moravia’s most important Catholic centres where Roman Cardinal Giovanni Coppa, together with Bohemian and Moravian bishops, celebrated a festive holly mass to mark the event.

The brothers Cyril and Methodius, originally from Thessaloniki, arrived in Moravia in 863 to spread the gospel in a Slavic language; for that they also designed a script known as the Cyrillic alphabet.