Baltic States – CIS, Estonia, Financial Services, Legislation, Real Estate

A representative of the creditors announced a month ago that the creditors had decided to put the building of St. Alexander's of Narva up for auction with a starting price of 500,000 euros. The sum is beyond what the EELK or the government can come up with, the office of the archbishop said. At the same time many people, including a number of entrepreneurs, have expressed readiness to support the buyout of the building so as to keep it in public use as a sacral and cultural building.

In the appeal sent to Lutheran congregations of Estonia on Monday, Viilma admits that leaders of the St. Alexander's congregation made mistakes, taking wrong decisions to speed up the restoration of the church. But he says that after the last few weeks' discussions of the issue with Estonian leaders and seeing their concern and efforts to resolve the problem, he still believes there is hope of salvaging a part of the congregation's assets, in the first place the church building, by buying it out of the bankruptcy estate.

The Viru county court declared St. Alexander's of Narva bankrupt in April 2015 because of the small congregation's inability to meet the financial obligations taken in connection with the reconstruction of the church building. The bankrupt congregation still has the use of the church and its other buildings, but after their sale as bankruptcy estate the Lutherans of Narva will be left without a roof over their heads and the probability is high that the church will never be restored as a building in the service of culture and worship that has the value of a symbol in the mostly Russian-populated border city.