The head of Macarius, however, was missing. It was not until 2005 that the Eparchy (Archdiocese) of Nizhny Novgorod was contacted by a priest who had inherited the head (or most of it, at any rate) from his brother, also a priest, who in his turn had saved it from the Bolsheviks some time after the closing of the Unzhensky Makaryev Monastery in 1929. The priests had reverently kept the relics in their homes for many years, until they felt secure that the Russian Church is reborn and is restoring Macarius' monasteries. After the special commission of the archdiocese, with the forensic experts' help, established the genuineness of the relics, their return was celebrated at a special service in the Holy Saviour Cathedral in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin on March 23, 2006.