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January 29, 2009

World church leaders welcome election of Kirill as Russian Patriarch

Ecumenically-minded new Russian Orthodox Church leader praised

by Sophia Kishkovsky
Ecumenical News International

MOSCOW ― Ecumenical leaders have welcomed the election of Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad as the 16th Patriarch of Moscow and of all Russia and expressed hopes of greater church unity under his helm.

The 62-year-old will become Patriarch Kirill I, after being elected by an overwhelming majority of a council of the entire Russian Orthodox Church on Jan. 27 in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

He succeeds Patriarch Aleksy II, who died on Dec. 5 after guiding the world’s largest Orthodox church of more than 140 million people through the turbulent post-Soviet era.

Kirill will be enthroned on Feb. 1 at the cathedral, which was blown up on the orders of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1931 and was rebuilt in the 1990s to become a grand, gold-domed symbol of the church’s revival.

Pope Benedict XVI congratulated Kirill, saying, “May the Almighty also bless your efforts to seek that fullness of communion which is the goal of Catholic-Orthodox collaboration and dialogue.”

The general secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Rev. Samuel Kobia, said, “We recognize the church leader, who has played an important role in the realm of inter-religious dialogue and international relations.”

The general secretary of the Geneva-based Conference of European Churches, Archdeacon Colin Williams, said he hoped that Kirill’s appointment would bring the Russian church back into the church grouping. The Russian church suspended its membership in CEC in 2008 in a dispute about the non-admittance to CEC of the Orthodox church in Estonia, which is linked to the Moscow Patriarchate.

“At the Conference of European Churches we have in these last years had good cause to be grateful for your own commitment to the ecumenical journey,” Williams said in congratulating the new Patriarch. “We look forward to continuing to explore that journey with you.”

The election was announced live on national television, as the cathedral’s bells rang out and cameras panned over rows of black-robed hierarchs and hundreds of other delegates from around Russia, the former Soviet Union and the world, who came to the Local Council to elect the new Patriarch.

Kirill won 508 of the more than 700 votes while169 went to Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk, the Moscow Patriarchate’s property manager.

“With humility and a full understanding of the responsibility before me, I accept God’s lot, through which the Patriarchal ministry has been entrusted to me,” he said at a service after his election. “It is great. It is demanding. But at the center of this service is the Holy Cross, a cross of such size that can be understood and felt only by him who bears it.”

Kirill’s election was preceded by passionate debates on blogs and Web sites and in the media over the course the church and the new Patriarch should take. The race for the patriarchal throne played out like a contemporary political campaign. Some glossy magazines that usually focus on movie stars praised Kirill for his oratory skills, calling him glamorous.

In the 1970s Kirill was the Moscow Patriarchate’s representative to the World Council of Churches. His ecumenical work and ties with the Roman Catholic Church had made him a target of criticism from nationalist-oriented sectors in Russia.

As an outspoken defender of moral values in the modern world and of Russia’s canonical territory in the post-Soviet era, he has also clashed with international ecumenical organizations, the Vatican and other Orthodox churches.

Kirill had spoken in tough terms about threats to church unity, especially in Ukraine. The 1020th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus, which brought Orthodoxy to Russia from Byzantium in 988, was celebrated in Kiev mid-year in 2008. 

The Orthodox church in Ukraine has broken into rival groups since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The largest is still loyal to Moscow and accounts for more than one-third of the Russian Orthodox Church, but calls have grown for its independence or autocephaly in church terms.

The Moscow Patriarchate is also threatened with fracture on its home territory. Diomid, a renegade bishop in the Arctic region of Chukotka, who had gained a following around Russia for his criticism of the church's hierarchs, was demoted to the rank of monk last year. 

Tight security around Christ the Saviour Cathedral during the councils was attributed in part to concerns about possible protests by his supporters, who demonstrated outside the cathedral during a meeting of the Archbishops' Council in mid-2008.

In the 1990s media reports painted Kirill as responsible for scandals related to tax breaks on imports of tobacco and alcohol granted to the church to fund reconstruction efforts. Some critics also accused him of being a KGB agent.

He was born Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev in Leningrad in 1946 into a clergy family.  Both his grandfather and father served time in Soviet prison camps and later became priests.

Kirill I will be watched closely for his relations with the Kremlin. Those who know him say he is regarded as a consummate politician, who can both stand with the Kremlin or play against it.