Patriarch Kirill

Writing for the Independent, a UK newspaper, Paul Vallely looks at a legal battle over control of an Orthodox cathedral. The power struggle, he writes, began with an influx of Russian immigrants to the United Kingdom and their clash with an assimilated, diverse Orthodox community.

“Huge numbers arrived,” says one of the parishioners, Ruth Nares, a teacher who converted from Anglicanism two decades before because of what she describes as Orthodoxy’s extraordinary sense of sacredness. “We were a community of white Russians, Finns, French, Italians and English converts. But the incomers had a different mentality. To many, it was just a place to meet fellow Russians. They would come in halfway through service, talking loudly at the back, and started making lunch there.” Karin Greenhead, a musician, says: “There was a lot of unpleasantness and elbowing and pushing. It was noisy and unprayerful. There was even a fight outside the church.”

But it was not just the congregation that changed. Extra priests sent over by Moscow during the past six years imported an unwelcome world view, too. “Nearly every Sunday we were bombarded with Soviet-style propaganda and warnings that ‘the Devil is among us’,” says Nicholas Tuckett, the founder of Ikon Records, which markets recordings of Orthodox music. “I was finding it impossible to pray.”

The points at issue largely concerned the minutiae of church life. There were disputes about whether marriages could take place on a Saturday, how frequent communion should be, how strictly fasting rules were to be observed, whether women were obliged to wear headscarves in church or forbidden from wearing trousers.

But what lay behind all the nit-picking was a fundamental struggle for power. The Russo faction began to petition Moscow for reform to press the original community to become more Russian. Metropolitan Anthony’s anointed successor, Bishop Basil, asked Moscow to disassociate itself from what he saw as troublemakers. But in Moscow, Metropolitan Kirill, who was last month elected head of the entire Russian Orthodox Church, declined to reply.

Read “The Battle Over Britain’s Orthodox Church” in the Independent.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zbtVDt1NgQ[/youtube]

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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