Moscow Times

Russia’s new patriarch is “proving to be a capable administrator” and has surrounded himself with a team of “well-trained and capable younger clerics,” say Leonid Sevastyanov and Robert Moynihan in the Moscow Times. In “100 Days of Patriarch Kirill,” the writers also say that the new leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has a “fully European” vision for his ministry.

Kirill now heads a church with about 140 million adherents, far larger than the Anglican Church and second only to the Roman Catholic Church. With a significant percent of Orthodox believers living outside Russia, this gives the church a truly global reach.

But statistics are less important than suffering and faith. The Russian Orthodox Church suffered greatly under Soviet rule. Now it has re-emerged from the catacombs following the collapse of the Soviet Union 17 years ago to take on a greater role in post-Soviet Russia.

Despite the enormous challenges that the Orthodox Church faces, now is the time of promise and hope for a country that has become highly secularized. Kirill evidently hopes that it will be a “Orthodox moment” for the church as well as the country.

One of Pope John Paul II’s most important goals was to put an end to the scourge of atheist communism, and Pope Benedict XVI still passionately hopes to see the restoration of a unified church. While Kirill has not spoken in terms of unification, he has helped improved ties with Rome. This explains why Benedict has made numerous gestures toward Kirill of welcome and appreciation since the moment that he was elected patriarch on Jan. 27.

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In the Moscow Times, Leonid Sevastyanov and Robert Moynihan write that the new Russian Patriarch Kirill “has deep convictions about the role of the Christian faith in the future of Russia and about Russia’s role in the future of Europe and the world.” The writers say that the Patriarch is convinced that only a return to “real values” can enable Russia and Europe to confront the current economic crisis. “Moreover,” the authors say, Patriarch Kirill “believes that Russia’s greatness, eclipsed in recent years, can only be restored by renewing its ancient Orthodox faith.”

Given his relatively young age, 62, Kirill could be patriarch for the next generation. He will undoubtedly set out to fulfill a double agenda. First, he will want to build on what Alexy II accomplished during the 18 years of his patriarchate, continuing the rebuilding of the church’s ruined infrastructure. Thousands of churches have been rebuilt across Russia since 1991. Second, he could start a series of new initiatives to strengthen the church’s voice and influence in Russian society.

The new patriarch can be expected to reopen schools, expand seminaries, renew monasteries and in general restore the outward signs of Russian Orthodox religious life. But Kirill, who was the key figure behind the unprecedented promulgation of the church’s social teaching in a document in 2000, can also be expected to take bold new steps to go beyond renewing the institutional structure of the church.

Russian-American blogger Typicon Man lists the “important issues” facing the new Patriarch, beginning with Parish Life.

Implementing the Parish Bylaws of the 1917-1918 Local Council and the normalization of parish life, destroyed during the years of state persecution. This will mean first and foremost the resolution of property issues — the State must finally return to parishes all property confiscated from the Church following the Bolshevik Revolution. This will mean keeping a register of parishioners, creating parish assemblies and parish councils to administer internal parish affairs as well as the further development of parish schools, libraries, and the like.

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Vladimir Berezansky, Jr., a U.S. lawyer with experience in Russia and former Soviet republics, recalls an interview with Patriarch Alexy II in 1991. Like many Russians at the time, the Patriarch was coping with a “disorienting change” following the fall of the Soviet Empire, Berezansky writes.

At the time, he seemed overcome by the changes taking place around him, and he did not know where to begin.

“For our entire lives, we [clerics] were pariahs, and now we are being called on to do everything: chaplains for the military, ministries to hospitals, orphanages, prisons,” he said.

He even voiced regret about taking the time to travel to the United States. But he had gambled — correctly, as it turned out — that he could do more for his flock by seeking foreign assistance than by staying home to manage the Russian Orthodox Church’s destitution. His plate was full and overflowing, and he seemed keenly aware of the ironies of his situation. The Russian state was returning desecrated, gutted, largely useless ecclesiastical structures to the Orthodox church — a gesture at once desperate, empty and to some degree remorseful.

Berezansky then points to the Patriarch’s rapid rise through the Church hierarchy:

During and after the chaos of World War II, he probably could have emigrated and been numbered among the millions of so-called “Second Wave” exiles from Soviet Russia. But he chose to remain and to serve his church and people in circumstances that could not fail to compromise his own reputation.

“Our choices were cooperation or annihilation,” he told me in 1991.

And like so many other religious and cultural leaders of his generation, he repeatedly expressed regret and remorse for having accepted that Faustian bargain. Even today we continue to learn of the choices of conscience made by the famous names of that generation, including Nobel-winning German writer Günter Grass and Czech novelist Milan Kundera.

Patriarch Alexy’s legacy will undoubtedly include two elements that have been assessed negatively, and one major — indeed, overarching — achievement. In inter-church relations, his refusal to meet Pope John Paul II or his successor, Benedict XVI, was seen as churlish. Whether welcome or not, the patriarch’s position was that specific issues of contention between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches needed to be ameliorated before any “photo op” could take place. But he consistently referred to Roman Catholicism as a “sister” church.

Read “A Transitional Patriarch” on the Moscow Times site.