Patriarch Alexy II
Alexy II became Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1990, shortly before the collapse of the atheist Soviet Union, and presided over a religious revival in Russia, with thousands of churches and monasteries being restored and hundreds of new ones built across the country. Aleksy presided over the revival of a church decimated by communism. Aleksy's biggest achievement may have been to prevent the church from embracing fundamentalism during the 1990s when that was a major temptation among the Soviet-hardened faithful. Aleksy's main characteristic was that he was a centrist, spiritually and as a politician. Aleksy II was able to unite. His favorite saying was, "I'm not going to make anybody a martyr." And his ability to tolerate, to maintain a dialogue with very different people, to think his actions through has been very important for the church, which did not disintegrate during the disintegration years in the 1990s.
According to Aleksiy II, between 1990 and 1995 more than 8,000 Russian Orthodox churches were opened, doubling the number of active parishes and adding thirty-two eparchies (dioceses). In the first half of the 1990s, the Russian government returned numerous religious facilities that had been confiscated by its communist predecessors, providing some assistance in the repair and reconstruction of damaged structures. The most visible such project was the building of the completely new Christ the Savior Cathedral, erected in Moscow at an expense of about US$300 million to replace the showplace cathedral demolished in 1931 as part of the Stalinist campaign against religion. Financed mainly by private donations, the new church was considered a visible acknowledgment of the mistakes of the Soviet past.
In the first half of the 1990s, the church's social services also expanded considerably with the creation of departments of charity and social services and of catechism and religious education within the patriarchy. Because there was a shortage of priests, Sunday schools have been introduced in thousands of parishes. An agreement between the patriarchy and the national ministries of defense and internal affairs provides for pastoral care of military service personnel of the Orthodox faith. The patriarch also has stressed that personnel of other faiths must have access to appropriate spiritual guidance. In November 1995, Minister of Defense Grachev announced the creation of a post in the armed forces for cooperation with religious institutions.
Among the religious organizations that appeared in the 1990s were more than 100 Russian Orthodox brotherhoods. Reviving a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, these priest-led lay organizations do social and philanthropic work. In 1990 they formed the Alliance of Orthodox Brotherhoods, which organizes educational, social, and cultural programs and institutions such as child care facilities, hostels, hospitals, and agricultural communities. Although its nominal task was to foster religious and moral education, the alliance has taken actively nationalist positions on religious tolerance and political issues.
Public opinion surveys revealed that the church emerged relatively unscathed from its association with the communist regime -- although dissidents such as Yakunin accused Aleksiy II of having been a KGB operative. According to polls, in the first half of the 1990s the church inspired greater trust among the Russian population than most other social and political institutions. Similarly, Aleksiy II, elected to head the church upon the death of Patriarch Pimen in 1990, was found to elicit greater grassroots confidence than most other public figures in Russia. The political leadership regularly seeks the approval of the church as moral authority for virtually all types of government policy. Boris Yeltsin's appearance at a Moscow Easter service in 1991 was considered a major factor in his success in the presidential election held two months later. Patriarch Aleksiy officiated at Yeltsin's inauguration that year. Vladimir Putin worked to restore the church to a central role in Russian life -- and rebuild its traditional ties to the Kremlin.
The federal Government does not require religious instruction in schools, but it continues to allow public use of school buildings after hours for the ROC to provide religious instruction on a voluntary basis. Religion was taught in Sunday schools, in public secondary schools, and in specialized religious schools (lyceums, gymnasia); the latter have the status of a secondary educational institution. Several regions offer a course on Orthodox Christianity in public schools. In practice students may be compelled to take this course where schools do not provide alternatives.
In the 1990s, the Russian Orthodox hierarchy's position on the issue of religious freedom has been muted but negative in many respects, as church officials have seen themselves defending Russian cultural values from Western ideas. Patriarch Aleksiy lent his support to the restrictive legislation as it was being debated in 1993, and Western observers saw an emerging alliance between the Orthodox Church and the nationalist factions in Russian politics. In another indication of its attitude toward the proliferation of "foreign" religious activity in Russia, the hierarchy has made little active effort to establish contacts with new foreign religious groups or with existing groups, and experts see scant hope that an ecumenical council of churches will be established in the near future. In October 1995, the Orthodox Church's governing Holy Synod refused to participate in a congress of Orthodox hierarchs because the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople had recognized the Orthodox community in Estonia and an autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
In the period from 1989 to 2009, the Department for external church relations of the Moscow Patriarchate (DECR) was led by Archbishop (Metropolitan since 1991) Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, now Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. Under him, the DECR structure and work underwent qualitative changes. Dialogue with the state reached a fundamentally new level resulting in optimal church-state relations and helped to extend and consolidate contacts and cooperation with political, public, scientific, cultural and other similar organizations.
In 2007 there took place the momentous and historic re-establishment of eucharistic communion between the two parts of the Russian Church. They had been divided following the persecution of the 1920s and the compromises of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) who had usurped power in Moscow with Communist backing. The re-establishment of canonical communion had been unthinkable only seven years previously.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
