The Venerable Saint Paisios of Mount Athos on expensive donations

"... Forgive me, perhaps I am wrong in this: to collect money from the righteous and then build bell towers and add [expensive] lamps and an array of luxurious vestments was a custom of the tsars and had very bad consequences, to the extent that it brought communism to Russia. But we also see these consequences on the Holy Mountain [Mount Athos]. The tsar did not take care of the miserable people in Russia, instead he sent gold in fleets to build another cathedral - for just one ascetic monk, while building one small church would have made sense. I am not speaking of great splendor for it is indescribable. What we see today are the ruins of the most magnificent Russian churches and buildings on the Holy Mountain and atheism in Russia..."

From a letter to Dmitri, 14 March, 1971, Hermitage of the Holy Cross near Stavronikita Monastery on Mount Athos [Translated from Modern Greek to Russian by Tatiana Samoylenko, and from Russian to English by Aviv Saliou].