The problem of overcoming the schism in Orthodoxy in Ukraine came up on Thursday at a luncheon in the Kremlin that included Russian President Vladimir Putin, the head of the Ukrainian government, Leonid Kuchma, and Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and all-Rus.
ITAR-TASS was told at the Moscow patriarchate that Leonid Kuchma laid out for the head of the Russian church his own vision of the ways to overcome the crisis in church life that has arisen as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union. The president of Ukraine is convinced that granting autonomy to the Ukrainian Orthodox church of the Moscow patriarchate could resolve many of the most painful problems.
In accordance with the new statute of the Russian church that was adopted at the jubilee bishops' council in 2000, the Ukrainian Orthodox church (UPTs) that is within the jurisdiction of the Moscow patriarchate received the status of a self-governing church. At the same time the council showed its readiness to promulgate the autonomy of UPTs, but under the condition that this problem will be resolved on a panorthodox level.
According to Ukrainian bishops who took part in the bishops' council, the church public of Ukraine has opposed autonomy because they do not wish to break their ties with the mother church, and this condition should be respected. At the present time in Ukraine, besides UPTsMP there are two other active orthodox churches, the Ukrainian Orthodox church of the Kievan patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church. (tr. by PDS, posted 30 November 2001)
Russia
Religion News Current News Items
The participation by Patriarch Alexis II in an advertisement of the largest Russian petroleum company, "Lukoil," evoked amazement on the part of many observers, the "Vertograd" news agency reports.
Last Monday on the morning program of the Russian state television channel RTR a twenty-five-second advertisement was aired, showing Patriarch Alexis II in front of one of the churches surrounded by leaders of Lukoil, including its president, Vagit Alekperov. Then the primate of the Moscow patriarchate was shown in a broad shot alone against the background of a gilded iconostasis. "We are grateful to Lukoil for its support of many projects of RPTs directed toward the restoration and regeneration of what had been destroyed in the past during the years of the war on God, when our historical memory was eradicated," the patriarch said. At the same time there appeared on the screen in big letters: "Tenth anniversary of Lukoil; for Russia's benefit."
Critics noted that immediately after this spot RTR broadcast an ad for a beer brand.
"We have done what we could for reviving churches and monasteries and now the patriarch has considered it possible to congratulate us," Lukoil president Dmitry Dolgov stated, giving assurances that none of the persons shown in the ad had received any kind of honorarium from his company.
On its part, a representative of the Moscow patriarchate, Viktor Malukhin, noted that Patriarch Alexis II's participation in the advertisement was an expression of "natural gratitude" to Lukoil for its help. Although the total of the financial aid from Lukoil to MP has still not been officially published anywhere, Malukhin stated that the petroleum giant, along with "Gazprom" and the Ministry of Communication are the largest patrons of the church. (tr. by PDS, postsed 30 November 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
The judicial session on the case of the liquidation of the Moscow society of Jehovah's Witnesses was postponed to 10 January of next year, according to "Blagovest-info." The hearing will be held in the Golovin intermunicipal court of the capital.
According to the head of the Department for Public Relations of the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses, Aleksei Nazarychev, presiding judge Vera Dubinskaia announced to attorneys for the "Witnesses" and representatives of the prosecutor's office of the northern administrative district that one of the people's assessors had been removed from the panel of judges. In such a case, the judge explained, the hearing is not only postponed to another day but the whole case begins de novo. Aleksei Nazarychev suggested that such a decision "possibly appears to be no accident." (tr. by PDS, posted 30 November 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
It is considered within the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) that it is premature to speak of an imminent unification with the Moscow patriarchate. The secretary of the bishops' synod of ROCOR, Vicar Bishop Gavriil, stated on Wednesday in an interview with ITAR-TASS in New York that "the question of a trip by ROCOR head Metropolitan Laurus for conversations on this matter has not been discussed; it must first be agreed upon at the synodal level."
"This is a rather serious question and I think that nobody can resolve it unilaterally, not even the metropolitan; it is necessary to consult with other bishops," Bishop Gavriil said. He reported that no official invitation for the head of ROCOR to visit Russia had been received. Russian President expressed such a desire during his recent visit to USA.
At the same time the secretary of ROCOR synod thinks that the preconditions for beginning a dialogue at the level of commissions on the matter of the unity of the church now exist. This year such a commission was created at the ROCOR council and the Moscow patriarchate is planning to create a similar one. "If our commissions sit down at the negotiating table, perhaps they will talk about what divides us and whether it is possible to overcome it and how. And we shall see what comes of that," the bishop said. (tr. by PDS, posted 30 November 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
A petition signed by 9,386 Jehovah’s Witnesses in Moscow was to be presented to the Golovinsky Court this morning. Hundreds of Witnesses packed the corridors for the release of the petition when Judge Vera Dubinskaya unexpectedly announced an adjournment until sometime in the New Year when, according to Russian procedure, the trial will start all over again. Later this week copies of the petition will be delivered to the Prosecutor-General’s Office and to President Putin.
The petition, signed during the past ten days, asks the court to reject a Moscow prosecutor’s false claim to protect their rights. It was prompted by Prosecutor Tatyana Kondratyeva’s assertion that her application to ban the Moscow Community of Jehovah’s Witnesses as a legal entity is a means to protect the rights and freedoms of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Moscow. The petition states, in part:
"We have never asked the NAC Prosecutor to defend our rights, including by banning our religious community. Our religious community does not violate our rights. We voluntarily participate in our community’s activities because we cherish our religious beliefs and wish to practise our faith together with our fellow believers.
"We do not hate people of other religions, nor do we wish them any evil. We believe in Jesus’ teaching that true Christians do good toward all regardless of religious faith.
"Furthermore, during her opening statement of 5 November 2001, Prosecutor T.I. Kondratyeva declared that Jehovah’s Witnesses are a threat to national security, referring to the National Security Doctrine amended by Russian President V.V. Putin in 2000. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a Russian religious organization and comprise an integral part of its tragic history. The history of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the USSR, and, accordingly, in the Russian Federation, is over 100 years. Many of us are second- or third-generation believers. Many were persecuted for our faith and officially recognized as victims of political persecution. We cannot present any threat to national security, since we are honorable and law-abiding citizens of our country.
"We disagree with this action of the prosecutor which seeks to deprive us of our right to religious association, our freedom to receive and distribute religious literature, and right to hold religious gatherings.
"We ask this honourable Court and all responsible governmental agencies to reject the prosecutor’s false claim to protect our rights." (posted 26 November 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
During his visit to USA, V.V. Putin transmitted to the new head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), Metropolitan Laurus, and synodal secretary Bishop Gavriil an invitation to visit Russia. This was reported by His Holiness Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and all-Rus on 21 November in a conversation with reporters in the cynodal residence in St. Daniel's monastery.
"If the invitation is accepted, during Metropolitan Laurus' stay conversations will be conducted about the possible paths to unification of the churches," His Holiness declared. "In the twenty-first century conditions have developed for the reunification of the Russian Orthodox diaspora with the mother church. The letter that was sent by the Russian Orthodox church to members of the bishops' council of ROCOR has a fraternal character," His Holiness Patriarch Alexis said. "The foreign church at the present is going through a difficult period of schism. Eighty years of division have left their mark and thus it to not right to force events." (tr. by PDS, posted 25 November 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
Once in the Smolensk church in Leningrad there was a strange incident. A young boy who had taken communion at the altar got confused and exited by mistake through the royal doors in complete violation of the canons and rules. His mother was horrified, but the priest kindly stroked the boy's head and said: "He will be a bishop!"
Many years have passed since that time. This year the Most Reverend Kirill, metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad and chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow patriarchate, has a dual jubilee: in the spring he celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ministry in episcopal rank and today, 20 November, the master is fifty-five years old. The editors of "Muscovite perspectives" is pleased to join their voices with the chorus of church and secular greetings that one of the most authoritative bishops of the Russian Orthodox church is receiving in these days.
He was born in 1946. One needs to imagine Leningrad and Russia in the first postwar year. It was a time of contrasts and contradictions: the pride of the great victory and the fatal memory of the blockade, the wealth of the national achievement and the ineradicable poverty, the rebirth of the church (in contrast with the years of repressions and executions) and the horrible devastation of bondage.
The father of Volodia Gundiaev, as the future metropolitan was named at baptism, was an engineer in a military factory and his mother was a teacher of the German language. But literally one year later the situation in the family changed; the father took religious orders and became a priest in the church in the Smolensk cemetery. He had his own reasons for this. The family was a believing one in all generations. The grandfather, who actively participated in church life during the period of the struggle with renovationism, became one of the first prisoners on the Solovki camp of special purpose. He spent thirty years in prisons and exiles, separated from his family and eight children but unbroken. So the son and grandson had someone to compare themselves with.
The situation in the family was infused with love and harmony. The father had a large library, more than 3,000 volumes. Already in his youth Vladimir was able to read books that have become available to the majority of our readers only in recent years: Berdiaev, Bulgakov, Vladimir Soloviev, the flower of Russian religious philosophy.
There is one curious streak in the formation of his character. He never was a Young Pioneer nor a Young Communist. That was not because he was a dissident but because of principled religious reasons. In the years when every school child was supposed to be a Young Pioneer, such consistency seemed a rare exception. When the director of the school summoned him, Vladimir said: "If you agree that I can go to church in the [Pioneers'] necktie, I will become a Pioneer." The question was dropped.
At fifteen he began his independent life. He was employed in the Leningrad Geological Expedition and studied in night school. He was a thoroughly complex person, with firm convictions and a conscientious choice of the path. To be sure, following his father's example, Vladimir wanted first to get a secular education. The exact sciences were especially easy for him. At work he was promised an inside track to the physics faculty of the university. But then. . . .
Nothing in life is accidental, but there are special transforming events and meetings. His older brother Nikolai was already studying at the Leningrad Ecclesiastical Academy. He advised him to get counsel from Metropolitan Nikodim who at the time headed the Leningrad diocese.
"I well recall," Master Kirill says, "how I went into his office and was startled when I saw him. He was sitting at the desk, in his underclothing, without a head covering, and he simply offered me a seat. And he gave the impression that he had known me a long time; there was no majesty, no awesome glance; it was as if he was meeting a friend. His piercing, penetrating gaze. Before me sat a very strong person, possessing enormous powers of will and mind."
Nikodim did not advise him to enter the university. "There are many physicists in our country even without you, but there are few priests," he said. "Go directly to seminary."
Gundiaev did that, and he never afterward regretted that he heeded the metropolitan. At the time the situation in ecclesiastical schools was difficult. The epoch of church stalinism, with its flaws but nevertheless Orthodox imperial nostalgia, had been replaced by the stupid antireligious fervor of N.S. Khrushchev, who promised "to display the last padre on television in ten years." But it turned out that this "last and decisive" battle for the souls of people was shamefully lost by the system of state atheism. The church survived, although the policy of diktat and pressure, which became more hypocritical and refined, continued to the very end of the 1980s.
In accordance with the plan for the imminent closing of the ecclesiastical schools, at the time fewer and fewer young people were accepted into the seminary and more people of low intellectual level were accepted. In his first class in the seminary Gundiaev felt extremely uncomfortable. One does not know how things would have turned out if Metropolitan Nikodim had not again insisted that he complete two levels each year, that is, to become in effect a correspondence student. Nikodim also made him his subdeacon and later his secretary.
The load was enormous; it was necessary to study and to work. Nikodim was a demanding person and held a very high standard in life and in academic preparation. On 27 March 1969 Vladimir Gundiaev was tonsured a monk with the name Kirill.
Upon graduation from the academy, the twenty-four-year old was sent to Geneva as the representative of the Russian church at the World Council of Churches, and four years later was appointed rector of the Leningrad academy, where he had studied.
Before the revolution, when there were four ecclesiastical academies in Russia, the difference of the academic orientation in each of them was depicted by students thus: in Petersburg they train diplomats, in Kiev, Jesuits, in Kazan, drunks, and in the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy all three are combined. It was a joke, but the Petersburg academy, like "Petersburg Orthodoxy" as a whole, really did have, as they said then, its distinct coloring.
"At the level of the dialogue of civilizations Petersburg was a very interesting place," Metropolitan Kirill says, recalling the time of his rectorship. "In Petersburg Russian Orthodoxy meets European culture face to face, which is a mighty partner behind which stood a colossal thousand-year tradition. What could happen? Western culture could, if not neutralize Orthodoxy, at least force it back. But it turned out differently. Orthodoxy was united with culture, confirming that the ecumenical church could work and act and florish in any culture.
It seems that the first months were difficult for the twenty-eight-year-old rector. He faced professors with whom he had been a student, and now he had become their director. But the optimal means for cooperation were found; the new rector did not impose on the academic corporation his own opinions and decisions. Working groups and departments were created and creative work on the reconceptualization and reorganization of the whole academic process was begun. World experience and the heritage of the prerevolutionary ecclesiastical schools were studied and an attempt was made to train students in independent research work. In a word, what was done in Leningrad in those years was amazing, like what has happened in ecclesiastical schools today.
He headed LDA exactly ten years. Then suddenly he was transferred to Smolensk. This of course was a demotion, especially after Leningrad. Smolensk land was an ancient religious stronghold and military shield of Russia. The patriotic war of 1812 and the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 bestowed on it the glory of battle. But the decades of antichurch policy and then the Brezhnev stagnation had done their work. At the beginning of the 1980s Smolensk diocese was among the most impoverished. One must know the circumstances of life and ministry of our provincial priests and bishops, when in the absence of any kind of roads it was necessary to walk knee-deep in mud or in a wooden cart to get to a distant parish. Not many years have passed, but it is already impossible even to imagine the degree of destruction of church life in the Russian countryside at that time, with half-deserted village churches with broken windows and rotted roofs. As you approached it you could not tell whether the church was active or not. Only by going inside and seeing the consecrated churchware and the altar in the apse did you understand that the church was active.
Indeed, it was necessary to go through this also. In the ensuing years the situation changed completely. Practically all of the village churches were restored and new parishes began opening. And then the work expanded; the metropolitan of Smolensk was assigned also the administration of Russia's westernmost diocese, Kaliningrad. And the main thing is that now the metropolitan has headed the Department for External Church Affairs, a unique brain trust of international and interreligious relations of the Russian Orthodox church, for twelve years.
The department was created in 1945 when the Russian church, on the crest of the victory in war, faced the task of regenerating and returning the Russian Orthodox presence and influence in the world. Nikolai Yarushevich, metropolitan of Krutitsy, a great church leader and preacher, was the founder and first chairman of the department. He took upon himself, as an historian writes, "the most difficult, immeasurable task and he bore it without bending." At the beginning of the 60s, when under pressure of Khrushchevite bureaucrats he was removed from all his offices, he was replaced by Metropolitan Nikodim, and the church leadership managed to use successfully the opportunity of external relations for strengthening the domestic position of the church in the soviet state. OVTsS turned out on the forefront of church-state relations. Conceived as an office that would conduct relations between the church and the external world, primarily beyond the borders, it gradually began performing functions connected with the relations between church and state. It seems that nobody removed foreign diplomatic work from it. Metropolitan Kirill describes it this way:
"If one speaks in military categories then before the troops go on the attack the theatre of operations must be prepared. In the first place there must be military intelligence. There must be a study of the terrain. It is necessary to get the weapons and then to dispatch the vanguard. All that precedes the evangelistic work of the church proper is the OVTsS."
We will not get into the details of the extremely complex and contradictory picture of contemporary interreligious, interconfessional (within Christianity) and inter-Orthodox (among different autocephalous churches) relations, controversies, and collisions. It is enough to recall the situation in Estonia and in western Ukraine, the most serious disputes between the Moscow and Constantinople (Ecumenical) patriarchates, and the recent visits by the pope of Rome to Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which actually were an intrusion into traditional canonical territories of the Russian Orthodox church. Throughout the twentieth century attempts were made to restore general Orthodox unity and to convene a pan-Orthodox council. It is not our fault that the Orthodox churches have not been able to approach a resolution of this matter that is important and painful for everybody.
In recent years the relations between the church and the world have taken on another critical feature. State and society in the postsoviet ideological vacuum have suddenly realized clearly the spiritual meaninglessness and the need for the church's help in healing the sores and illnesses that have gradually accumulated and become manifest in Russia since the fall of the socialist system. The massive impoverishment of the people--and the illegal enrichment of the clique of oligarchs and decline of the army and other power structures--and the flowering of corruption and crime and the removal of all moral restraints--and the catastrophic growth of alcoholism, drug addiction, and prostitution: the waves of social contradictions, enmity, and decline are growing larger. "Russia has leprosy"--this is the terminal diagnosis of the doctors and political pundits. It is only the church that can again speak the words of the Savior to the leper: "I wish it; be clean!" And to the one lying in paralysis: "Arise and walk!"
This is where the social doctrine of the Russian Orthodox church, that was produced under the leadership of Metropolitan Kirill in the bowels of OVTsS and adopted by the church at the bishops' council in the church of Christ the Savior in August 2000, gets its meaning. Just leafing through the document and reading the titles of the first divisions: "Church and nation," "Church and state," "Christian ethics and secular law," "Church and politics," one understands how extraordinary and necessary for each of us was the labor of the thinker who took on the task of formulating in terms that are understandable and accessible to everybody the relation of Christianity to labor, property, problems of war and military service, punishment and reformation of criminals, problems of family life, divorce, abortion, and human cloning, and dehumanization and globalization.
If one expresses the essence of the social doctrine in a single phrase, it is the response of the church to whether to believe even today in the miracle of resurrection from the dead of a whole country and whole people.
It is to the exploration of these named problems that for the last seven years the "Slovo pastyria" (Word of the pastor) show on TV Channel One has been devoted. Despite all his duties and very important work, Master Kirill has unceasingly found the energy and time for vital communication with believers and unbelievers. It was not in vain that upon his becoming a monk he received the name of Kirill the Philosopher, the enlightener of the Slavs. He sees the task of evangelistic ministry to consist in actively working with various types of mass media: he publishes a magazine and produces TV and radio broadcasts.
Metropolitan Kirill today is probably the most active and creative of the bishops. He celebrates twenty-five years of episcopal ministry in the flower of strength and energy, filled with the intent and resolve to await the day when the reborn Orthodox Russia will take its place in the world corresponding to its dignity and historic vocation. (tr. by PDS, posted 22 November 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
Yesterday Georgian Patriarch Ilia II hastened to announce that the kidnapping of four Georgian monks does not have any religious aspects. However the mood of local residents does not rule out a flare up of religious conflict between Orthodox and Muslims, and the current incident could become the occasion for this.
Representatives of various religious confessions exist in Georgia. Alongside Orthodox churches here there are Catholic and protestant churches, synagogues, and mosques. But the basic mass of believers, on the order of 80 percent, consists of Orthodox. Thus the kidnapping of the "spiritual fathers" evokes extraordinary interest among the bulk of the population.
The missing monks Basil Machitadze and Takhnil Khachidze as well as two novices were excommunicated about four years ago and since then they have lived in one of the caves in the mountains of Tushetiia. Now, according to reports, they were seized by kidnappers in the Pankisi canyon, where mostly Chechens live, which led to the suggestion of their participation in the kidnapping. However, another point of view exists. An expert on the relations of the peoples of the Caucasus, Mamuka Areshidze, denies interference in this affair on the part of Chechens since it is in their interests to maintain a stable situation in the Pankisi canyon. Areshidze does not rule out that this kidnapping could have been planned by state agencies which, by inflaming the situation, are trying to serve their own political goals.
Residents of the Kakhetia villages located near Pankisi are especially concerned. Not expecting any action by the authorities and patriarchate, the people themselves are prepared to go out on searches. It is known that a squad of volunteers numbering around thirty persons, many of whom are representatives of the "Dzhvari" (Cross) religious association from Rustavi. These people are distinguished by extraordinary extremism. According to reports, in Rustavi alone they have made several attacks on members of the Jehovah's Witnesses organization. Now they have the chance to use force in a more serious conflict. The volunteers do not doubt that Chechens were involved in the kidnapping of the monks, and the "religious" saviors are prepared to direct full force against them.
Chechens themselves have been involved in the search for the missing persons, although there have still been no positive results.
A similar situation developed in Georgia last fall when unknown persons in Tbilisi kidnapped two Spaniards. They still have not been freed, although the wives of the hostages gave money to the terrorists. The bandits also are demanding a ransom of one million dollars for the monks, which was reported by one of the hermits who was permitted to contact relatives by mobile phone. Besides this he managed to say only that the hostages need help. (tr. by PDS, posted 21 November 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
Yaroslavl believers demand return of Nazi priest to the parish.
When the new cross appeared on the old church, nobody in the Yaroslavl village of Vedenie remembers clearly. Local old folk studiously wrinkle their brows, perhaps two, perhaps four years ago. Although they all eagerly describe how one morning healthy, noisy boys and many large and small vehicles showed up in their quiet little village along with a portable crane. They worked until dark. And only when the sacred symbol took its place on the church cupola were the curious village folk dumbfounded--on the cross could be seen clearly a fascist swastika.
Parishioners dispersed as soon as the guests had departed. In the end everything was legit. Earlier the rector of the church, Fr Sergei, had gathered the flock and explained that soon they would get a new cross; and he asked permission to put a finishing touch on it, to add an ancient Orthodox symbol. Just what this was nobody clearly understood, but the parishioners nevertheless agreed. Everybody here respected the father and they decided not to second guess him. After all, who knew that the "finishing touch" would have such an evil form?
Holy father number ten
Fr Sergei came to Vedenie at that very moment when the roof of the church, which incidentally was built back in 1681, finally gave out and the belfry had rotted so badly that the floor under the feet of the bell ringer began caving in. That was five years ago and the priest then was barely thirty years old. "He had a strong physique and looked like a boxer or an officer of some security agency, but certainly not a priest. On his head sat a nazi cap, tilted to one side, and on his hairy chest, just a bit above the pectoral Orthodox cross, glistened a red and black SS swastika medallion. It was impossible not to notice it; it was like a bug engorged with blood," as the priest was vividly depicted by Yaroslavl reporter Pavel Nikitin. He was the first of the writers' fraternity to clash vigorously with this strange personality. To be sure, in time the fascist signs disappeared somewhere. Parishioners maintain that in recent years the priest had not indulged himself in anything like that. Now there's just the cross with a swastika at the center. But evidently that's the work of the devil.
At first the villagers were prepared to tolerate the new priest for at least a couple of months. His predecessors had fled from here with amazing speed; in ten years exactly nine priests had been replaced. Fr Sergei was the tenth. Before him the most longsuffering rector of the church had served eight months and then disappeared in an unknown direction. The others lasted only one to three months.
Fr Sergei never hid his political predilections. A local crone whom everybody calls simply Shurka is well known for her selling of vodka and strong dislike of the priest. "He called us all bitches and drove us out of the church," she complains, and then, after thinking a bit, she tells her story. "He had just arrived, and was not yet settled in, and we once heated up the bath. So we decided to invite the new priest. He did not yet have his own bath. Well we women went in first and then he went in to wash. He came back. He came into the room, raised his hand, and said 'Heil Hitler!' 'What is this?' I asked, but he didn't answer anything. And for a long time afterward my daughter tormented me with the question why this priest came into the house with such a strange prayer."
For the sake of justice it should be noted that numerous witnesses confirm the fact of the expulsion of Shurka from the church. But only after she had tried to sell a bottle of cheap moonshine to a neighboring parishioner directly in front of the altar.
Fr Sergei even advertised his friendship with the leader of "Russian National Unity," Alexander Barkashov. He was an old friend and associate since the time they had run together to hear a speech by the first Moscow national patriot Dmitry Vasiliev. In his house hung his picture between the Orthodox calendar and a portrait of Eva Braun, a woman who in the priest's opinion is worthy of the title of the ideal woman. Devotion--that's what in his opinion must be valued in a woman above a pretty face. And contemporary representatives of the female sex can hardly take credit for that, Fr Sergei noted. Two years ago the Barkashovites held a summer military camp for youth near the church. The children learned hand to hand combat and the nearby army division even put on a kind of battle for the young nationalist warriors.
Bad good man
Arrival in Vedenie is a curse for any minister of the church. Several old wooden huts stand in a thick forest; the nearest bus stop is three kilometers away; a good store is even farther. Once a week the elderly female parishioners gather from neighboring villages. The service is a unique event. Parishioners bring to church their carefully preserved rubles and kopecks. The most expensive candle is two rubles; prayer for health or rest is a ruble and a half, and another fifty kopecks have to be placed in the plate that is passed among the congregation at the service. The two dozen rubles collected in this way is the income. This is the money on which the priest and his family, if he has one, will exist for a week.
Fr Sergei did not die from hunger. He kept a garden, built a kennel in the yard of his house for his large, mean sheepdog, and began conducting a new procedure in the parish. And it cannot be said that the parishioners did not like this.
Soon a small bus appeared near the church. A swastika was drawn on both sides. Every Sunday the priest drove around the neighboring villages and transported the parishioners to the service and then took them home. The number of parishioners increased every month. Where this bus came from still remains a mystery. The priest himself said that the vehicle was given to him by some mysterious sponsors. "You can recognize this bus a kilometer away," villager Valentina Ivanovna Doronina says. "At first the police stopped him and asked questions about what this nonsense is. But then they left him alone."
Somehow surprisingly the church began to be restored. In time the roof was patched, the ceiling was cleaned, and a stove even was purchased for the winter. The repair of the church was borne mainly by the parishioners; women swept and mopped and men did the rest. "The priest was strict, but fair. I've lived a long time and never saw such a thing," the peasant Avdotia Gromova recalls now. "If someone wanted to avoid work he would summon him and explain that it was a sin; one may strive in the name of the Lord."
That Fr Sergei was strict is recalled here with satisfaction. And he did not simply remit sins but even sometimes disciplined. "He's the priest, he should be firm," the village parishioners say.
Cross or swastika?
Yaroslavl church and civil officials did not notice the eccentricities of the priest until that very cross with the swastika in the middle appeared. The first to react was the local department for the preservation of monuments of history and culture. A letter with a demand to put an end to this outrage was sent directly to the desk of Archimandrite Mikhei. Soon a delegation from Yaroslavl arrived in Vedenie.
"Where do you see a swastika?" Fr Sergei immediately clarified the situation. "This is an ancient form of the Greek letter 'gamma' that was displayed on communion vessels back in the fourth century. The Empress Alexandra Fedorovna drew it on the wallpaper near her bed after she arrived in Ekaterinburg in the Ipatiev house in 1918. Hitler was still a boy then. Finally, Hitler's swastika rotates to the right, but mine rotates to the left. So what can be the charges?"
Conversations continued for several days and ended in a peaceful agreement: at the first opportunity it will be necessary to cover the swastika with metal balls. Neither the diocese nor the Barkashovite priest has the money to replace the whole cross. But soon the situation changed radically. Fr Sergei flatly refused to put metal balls on it, but only golden ones. "When I collect the money for the gold, then the cross will be redone," he declared. But when will this money appear? That's something nobody can know.
When we went to Vedenie, the Barkashovite priest had not been serving in the church for a month already. After his removal from the parish he disappeared. Upon mention of his name at the Yaroslavl diocese, the telephone was hung up. During the time of the conflict, he drank a sea of blood from the local church officials, and after this Archimandrite Mikhei even wound up in the hospital with a heart attack. Thus Fr Sergei's name is equated here with the title "Satan." None of the parishioners knows the current residence of the former priest. But evenings they gather in one of the huts and diligently write letters to the local administration, the Moscow patriarchate, and even for some reason to the Ministry of Culture. They demand his return. I saw these letters and I could not believe my eyes. The old women, whose fathers and perhaps husbands died in the Great Patriotic war, tearfully ask for the return to them of the nationalist priest. "Why?" I ask them. "He was a very good man," they sigh. "He carried us in the bus, gave us financial advice, and he did what he could to help. We do not need someone else." "But he belongs to a fascist organization. Look, that's a swastika," I insist. "That's not a swastika," the women maintain and, searching to recall the needed word, they say, "it's a gamma. That's what Fr Sergei told us."
Recently the head of the village administration of the Krasnye Tkachi settlement (the nearest large population point), Alexander Seliaev, came to the priest's defense. "We have never had such a working priest," he says. "He restored the church and people returned to the parish. And what is especially important, he never asked us for money for all this; he got it somewhere himself." "And do you know just where?" I tried to turn the conversation to what is most important. "I do not know. I don't want to know. But somehow we will get our priest," the head of the administration waves his hands.
And then Baba Valia came up to us and told how Fr Sergei had left the village. The day before, he announced it, and Baba Valia immediately went up to him. "He embraced me and then said 'don't move, mom; I will surely return here again.' He will return, the dove. If he says it he surely will do it." The old woman looks at me hopefully and then at the cross with the swastika, and for some reason begins to cry. (tr. by PDS, posted 21 November 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
If material is quoted, please give credit to the publication
from which it came.
It is not necessary to credit this Web page. If material
is transmitted electronically, please include reference to the URL, http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/.