D
Diak
Guest
With so much disinformation it is refreshing to see journalistic honesty as it occurs all too infrequently.
FDRLB
"Alexy did all in his power to prevent Ukrainian Greek Catholics, whose church was banned between 1946 and 1989, returning to their ancestral faith and to prevent the Orthodox Churches absorbed by the Russian Church in the wake of the Soviet conquests, including those of his homeland Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova and Latvia, reasserting their independence."
“Despite opposing extreme nationalism, condemning bloodshed in solving disputes and supporting dialogue, Alexy’s record … often seemed closer to supporting Moscow’s imperial tendencies.”
Patriarch Alexy II: Priest who stayed close to the Kremlin while
guiding the Russian Orthodox Church into the post-Soviet era
By Felix Corley
Saturday, 6 December 2008
Patriarch Alexy II headed the Russian Orthodox Church at a difficult time in its history as it managed the transition from semi-official but restricted Church in an atheist state to semi-official Church in a half-reformed, unsettled post-imperial state.
As patriarch he tried to hold the ring between conservatives,
suspicious at any sign of abandoning old values, and reformers, who believed that only by changing itself could the Church make its voice heard to a secularised generation raised under atheist rule.
Alexy was born Alexey Ridiger in 1929 in Tallinn, the capital of
independent Estonia. His family was Russian-speaking, of Swedish or German origin, only coming to Estonia in 1917 from the turmoil of Petrograd. A former neighbour in Estonia remembered that they considered themselves Russian. His father, an Orthodox priest, was known as a Russifier in the pre-war Estonian Church.
After the wartime Soviet annexation of Estonia, Ridiger became a
Soviet citizen. He entered the Leningrad Theological Seminary in 1947, graduating two years later. He was ordained priest in Leningrad in April 1950 at the age of only 21 and appointed to a parish in Johvi in north-eastern Estonia. While there he continued his external studies at the Leningrad Theological Academy, graduating in 1953 with a thesis on the 19th-century Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret Drozdov. In July 1957 he was appointed to a parish in Tartu as local dean.
He had married in Leningrad on 11 April 1950, just a week before his ordination, though the marriage was to remain shrouded in mystery. His wife was Vera Alekseeva, daughter of a priest who later became Bishop Ioann of Tallinn. The service was conducted by their fathers (tradition says that this would bring bad luck) and took place in the immediate aftermath of Easter, when Orthodox custom does not normally allow weddings. It was rumoured that the wedding and ordination were rushed forward to prevent Ridiger being called up into the Soviet Army. However, the marriage was soon dissolved, apparently on the grounds of non-consummation. This then made Ridiger eligible to rise into the ranks of the episcopate.
Ridiger’s pedigree and his brilliant studies drew him to the attention of the KGB, which determined religious appointments in the Soviet Union in collaboration with the government’s Council for Religious Affairs (CRA). He was formally recruited in February 1958 “on the basis of patriotic feelings” and given the code name “Drozdov”. The KGB described their new recruit as “punctilious, energetic and personable” and praised him for his “willing attitude” to co-operation. He was earmarked to become Bishop of Tallinn and recommended for international work, a sign of the authorities’ trust.
Ridiger’s career did indeed take off from there. He was tonsured as a monk at the monastery in Zagorsk in March 1961, taking the name Alexy, and that September was consecrated Bishop of Tallinn (and temporarily of Riga) in Tallinn’s imposing Orthodox cathedral. He was upgraded to Archbishop in 1964 and Metropolitan in 1968.
But Alexy was destined to play a leading role in the wider Russian
Church and abroad. He joined the Church’s governing body, the Holy Synod, and became chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1964, a job he held for the next 22 years. This powerful position - impossible without the trust of the Soviet authorities - led to accusations that he was too closely identified with implementing the government’s anti-religious policies. Documents show he fulfilled KGB commands in quelling protests among monks at the Pskov Monastery ofthe Caves.
The Soviet authorities also viewed Alexy as reliable in foreign work. He became a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches in 1961, the year he became a bishop and the year the Russian Orthodox Church joined the WCC. Later he would be heavily involved in the Conference of European Churches, of which he became president in 1972 and chairman in 1987.
FDRLB
"Alexy did all in his power to prevent Ukrainian Greek Catholics, whose church was banned between 1946 and 1989, returning to their ancestral faith and to prevent the Orthodox Churches absorbed by the Russian Church in the wake of the Soviet conquests, including those of his homeland Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova and Latvia, reasserting their independence."
“Despite opposing extreme nationalism, condemning bloodshed in solving disputes and supporting dialogue, Alexy’s record … often seemed closer to supporting Moscow’s imperial tendencies.”
Patriarch Alexy II: Priest who stayed close to the Kremlin while
guiding the Russian Orthodox Church into the post-Soviet era
By Felix Corley
Saturday, 6 December 2008
Patriarch Alexy II headed the Russian Orthodox Church at a difficult time in its history as it managed the transition from semi-official but restricted Church in an atheist state to semi-official Church in a half-reformed, unsettled post-imperial state.
As patriarch he tried to hold the ring between conservatives,
suspicious at any sign of abandoning old values, and reformers, who believed that only by changing itself could the Church make its voice heard to a secularised generation raised under atheist rule.
Alexy was born Alexey Ridiger in 1929 in Tallinn, the capital of
independent Estonia. His family was Russian-speaking, of Swedish or German origin, only coming to Estonia in 1917 from the turmoil of Petrograd. A former neighbour in Estonia remembered that they considered themselves Russian. His father, an Orthodox priest, was known as a Russifier in the pre-war Estonian Church.
After the wartime Soviet annexation of Estonia, Ridiger became a
Soviet citizen. He entered the Leningrad Theological Seminary in 1947, graduating two years later. He was ordained priest in Leningrad in April 1950 at the age of only 21 and appointed to a parish in Johvi in north-eastern Estonia. While there he continued his external studies at the Leningrad Theological Academy, graduating in 1953 with a thesis on the 19th-century Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret Drozdov. In July 1957 he was appointed to a parish in Tartu as local dean.
He had married in Leningrad on 11 April 1950, just a week before his ordination, though the marriage was to remain shrouded in mystery. His wife was Vera Alekseeva, daughter of a priest who later became Bishop Ioann of Tallinn. The service was conducted by their fathers (tradition says that this would bring bad luck) and took place in the immediate aftermath of Easter, when Orthodox custom does not normally allow weddings. It was rumoured that the wedding and ordination were rushed forward to prevent Ridiger being called up into the Soviet Army. However, the marriage was soon dissolved, apparently on the grounds of non-consummation. This then made Ridiger eligible to rise into the ranks of the episcopate.
Ridiger’s pedigree and his brilliant studies drew him to the attention of the KGB, which determined religious appointments in the Soviet Union in collaboration with the government’s Council for Religious Affairs (CRA). He was formally recruited in February 1958 “on the basis of patriotic feelings” and given the code name “Drozdov”. The KGB described their new recruit as “punctilious, energetic and personable” and praised him for his “willing attitude” to co-operation. He was earmarked to become Bishop of Tallinn and recommended for international work, a sign of the authorities’ trust.
Ridiger’s career did indeed take off from there. He was tonsured as a monk at the monastery in Zagorsk in March 1961, taking the name Alexy, and that September was consecrated Bishop of Tallinn (and temporarily of Riga) in Tallinn’s imposing Orthodox cathedral. He was upgraded to Archbishop in 1964 and Metropolitan in 1968.
But Alexy was destined to play a leading role in the wider Russian
Church and abroad. He joined the Church’s governing body, the Holy Synod, and became chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1964, a job he held for the next 22 years. This powerful position - impossible without the trust of the Soviet authorities - led to accusations that he was too closely identified with implementing the government’s anti-religious policies. Documents show he fulfilled KGB commands in quelling protests among monks at the Pskov Monastery ofthe Caves.
The Soviet authorities also viewed Alexy as reliable in foreign work. He became a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches in 1961, the year he became a bishop and the year the Russian Orthodox Church joined the WCC. Later he would be heavily involved in the Conference of European Churches, of which he became president in 1972 and chairman in 1987.
). Please be patient. I will have the quotes from the canons by this weekend. This blessed Season is keeping me pretty busy and I don’t have time to research right now.