LORD,
HAVE MERCY!
EPIDEMIC IN RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
Coronavirus
afflicts
all the main centers of RPTs administration
by
Nikolai Mitrokhin
Republic,
27 April
2020
The
Russian Orthodox
Church (RPTs) is experiencing the most unexpected and unpleasant
period in its
modern history. Hundreds of its clergymen and monastics are ill
with the new
"fashionable" sickness, and several of its regular staff members
have
already died. Among them are the rector and archdeacon of the
former main
cathedral of the church, in Elokhovo.
The
coronavirus (for
brevity it has already long been called "corona") has afflicted
all
the principal centers of the RPTs administration: the
administration of the
patriarch of Moscow (including the chief of its chancellery,
who, by the irony
of fate, headed the church-wide Commission for Combating the
Coronavirus, and
the chief of patriarchal protocol); the administration of the
Ukrainian
Orthodox Church, which is a part of the RPTs (including,
according to many
indirect indicators, its head, Metropolitan Onufry); the
cathedral church in
Minsk; three of the five largest monasteries of the RPTs, the
lavras (St.
Sergius Holy Trinity, Kiev, and Pochaev); three of the five
largest educational
centers (the Moscow and Kiev Ecclesiastical Academies, and the
Zhirovichi
monastery where the Minsk seminary is located), while in all
three the rectors
with bishop rank contracted the illness; up to ten other
monasteries; and the
clergy (priests) of the largest churches of Moscow and several
other cities.
The commission under the patriarch on the coronavirus reports
approximately 100
infected priests in the capital. Among them is the greater part
of the clergy
of the church of Kosma and Damian, which is popular with the
liberal
intelligentsia, including the rector, Archpriest Alexander
Borisov. On Sunday,
Bishop of Zheleznogorsk and Lgov Veniamin died.
At the
same time, the
cases known to us are the tip of the iceberg. Many monasteries,
bishops, and
priests are used to concealing illnesses or limit themselves to
stating that a
test gave a positive result. The most egregious case was in
Minsk, where in the
large and popular St. Elizabeth Convent the hegumenia and
spiritual director
forbade the nuns to describe to outsiders the spread of the
epidemic, which
smote practically all sisters and priests, and they also
curtailed their
telephone and internet contacts with relatives. This was done so
that
parishioners would continue to attend services in the cloister.
The diagnosis
has already been confirmed for some of the parishioners.
Russian
Orthodox
scenario
The
spread of the
"corona" in the RPTs is substantially different from the Italian
scenario. There hundreds, if not thousands, of priests also
turned up infected
and dozens of them died. But this was exclusively the lower,
rank-and-file
clergy who, without realizing the danger fully, went into
hospitals,
participated in funerals and burials, continued their social and
evangelistic
work, and, it seems, became heavily infected.
In the
RPTs, the
virus is going "about the heights." Originally reports appeared
about
the infection of the "bosses." Thus, in Ukraine one of the first
to
be infected was the vicar abbot of the Kiev caves lavra and
permanent member of
the Synod, Metropolitan Pavel; in Moscow, it was several priests
from the
circle of the patriarch; in the Elokhovo cathedral, at first the
rector and
then the rest of the clergy; in the Saint Sergius Holy Trinity
lavra, the
rector of the academy was among the first and then the
seminarians and monks;
in the Jonah monastery of Kiev, it was the abbot and then just
the monks. [. .
.] (tr. by PDS, posted 28 April 2020)
Russian
original
posted on website of Credo.Press,
27 April 2020
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