ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — The remains of seven members of Russia's last imperial family, the Romanovs, will be given a formal burial July 3 if government officials sanction it, a senior Russian Orthodox Church official said.
The ceremony would take place at the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, the church official, Metropolitan Ioann, told a local newspaper.
Russian and British forensic experts are convinced of the authenticity of the remains of the Romanov family, found last year in a mass grave near the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.
A Russian government commission must now confirm that the remains were indeed those of Czar Nicholas II, his German-born wife, Alexandra, and their five children.
The family was shot on the orders of Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin on July 17, 1918.
