Patriarch Plugged In To Power

The Age

Wednesday December 10, 2008

Sophia Kishkovsky, New York Times

PATRIARCH ALEKSY II

RUSSIAN ORTHODOX LEADER

23-2-1929 - 5-12-2008

PATRIARCH Aleksy II, who as leader of the sprawling Russian Orthodox Church presided over its restoration as a powerful influence in Russian society after decades of Soviet persecution, has died from heart problems at his country residence in Peredelkino, outside Moscow. He was 79.

Aleksy II oversaw the largest Orthodox church in the world as the spiritual leader of more than 140 million people. He was the first leader of the church since the Bolshevik Revolution to be chosen without interference by the Soviet state, which had killed clergy members and believers and destroyed churches but which had allowed a church hierarchy to exist under tight control.

He rose to leadership in June 1990, days before Russia declared its sovereignty within the Soviet Union in the waning days of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, and little more than a year before the August 1991 coup, a thwarted effort to restore Soviet rule.

As patriarch, he significantly deepened the church's role in everyday life in Russia, erecting and restoring cathedrals, introducing Orthodox religious education in public schools and becoming a prominent voice on moral issues.

During Russia's war with Georgia in August, he called for peace and reminded Russians that Georgia was also an Orthodox country. But he was criticised for the church's close relations with the Kremlin. Last year, after then-president Vladimir Putin selected his close aide, Dmitry Medvedev, to succeed him, Aleksy II (the three are pictured together) praised the decision on national television.

Both Putin and Medvedev have identified themselves as Orthodox Christians and have strongly supported the church. President Boris Yeltsin, the first post-Communist leader of modern Russia, was more ambivalent about his religious faith but had warm personal ties to the patriarch.

The religious transformation that Aleksy II oversaw in Russia was underscored by Yeltsin's funeral in 2007. It was held within view of the Kremlin at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which was blown up on Stalin's orders in 1931 and rebuilt in the 1990s.

The choice of Aleksy II's successor will be closely watched for signs of Kremlin influence. Medvedev, who was visiting India when the patriarch died, cancelled a visit to Italy and returned to Moscow.

Aleksei Mikhailovich Ridiger was born in Tallinn, Estonia, to a Russian mother and a father of Baltic German descent. He spent his childhood in Estonia during its brief period of independence before World War II, when it was home to many Russian emigres and a Russian Orthodox spiritual centre.

He completed his theological studies in 1953 in what was then Leningrad, and began his rise in the church hierarchy in 1961, when he was appointed bishop of Tallinn and Estonia.

During his patriarchate, relations with the Catholic Church were a frequent focus of acrimony and debate. Yeltsin had invited Pope John Paul II to visit Russia, but the Moscow Patriarchate and Aleksy II, who had repeatedly accused Rome of proselytising on the "canonical territory" of the Russian Orthodox Church, said a papal visit would not be appropriate. The Pope did visit the Baltic States, Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

In the 1990s, as the tenets of Communism crumbled and Russia lunged into the free market, the church came under criticism when it was granted concessions for oil, tobacco and alcohol trading. The patriarchate said the money was needed to restore a ravaged church infrastructure, but its critics said it should not have been involved in such businesses.

During the 1990s, it became common to see leading politicians at Christmas and Easter services, events that once brought out the Soviet police to keep people away. Putin, a former KGB officer, seemed at ease and familiar with church rituals. Indeed, he helped facilitate a signal event of Patriarch Aleksy II's tenure: a historic rapprochement between the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia with the mother church in Russia.

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, a Manhattan-based emigre church, was created in the 1920s on a monarchist, anti-Soviet platform. It vowed not to reunite with the Russian church until Soviet rule had ended. The Russian Orthodox Church removed a major obstacle to reunion in 2000, when it canonised Tsar Nicholas II and his family, shot dead in 1918 after the Bolshevik Revolution, as well as hundreds of clergy, monks, nuns and believers killed during Stalin's rule.

Negotiations between the churches accelerated after a 2003 meeting in New York between Putin and Metropolitan Laurus of the emigre church. Metropolitan Laurus, who died earlier this year, travelled to Russia for a ceremony of reconciliation at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour held on May 17 last year. -- NEW YORK TIMES

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