Habemus KGB Patriarch!!!

[Priest Siluan]

Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev) - KGB Agent Mikhailov - is the new MP Patriarch conquering his nearer competitor, Met Kliment (Kapalin)-KGB agent Topaz-, 508 votes against 169 votes.

http://credo-rating.livejournal.com/14246.html

[jacqueline]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/world ... ?ref=world

MOSCOW — The Russian Orthodox Church elected an outspoken new leader on Tuesday to succeed Patriarch Aleksy II, who led the church for nearly two decades in the post-Soviet era.

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, who became interim patriarch after Aleksy died last month, was overwhelmingly elected and will be enthroned Sunday as the 16th patriarch of the world’s largest Orthodox church. His election was the first of a patriarch since the fall of the Soviet Union, which followed 70 years of state-imposed atheism.

A critic of declining moral values, Metropolitan Kirill has been involved in the ecumenical movement and has called for the Russian Orthodox Church to step up its outreach to secular society. He has also spoken in tough terms about threats to church unity, especially in Ukraine, where the Orthodox church has broken into rival groups since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“With humility and a full understanding of the responsibility before me I accept God’s lot,” he said after the decision was announced live on national television. Bells rang at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Moscow’s grandest cathedral and a symbol of the church’s revival in post-Soviet Russia, and cameras panned across hierarchs in robes.

The race for the patriarchal throne has played out almost like a contemporary political campaign, with passionate debates on Web sites and in blogs, and with tabloids and even some glossy celebrity magazines following the candidates as though they were movie stars.

Analysts had speculated that Metropolitan Kirill’s main opponent, Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk, the Moscow Patriarchate’s property manager, was favored by the Kremlin. They also noted that the list of lay delegates included bureaucrats and businessmen close to power, as well as a circus director from the southern city of Astrakhan.

A Web site for religious news, portal-Credo.ru, that has been critical of Metropolitan Kirill and the Moscow Patriarchate was knocked out by hackers, while his supporters praised him as an effective crisis manager who would guide the church through the difficult times it will be facing with the rest of Russia.

Magazines like Star Hit, whose usual fare tends toward sex and celebrities, joined the debate, praising Metropolitan Kirill for his oratory skills and describing him as glamorous.

Accusations of corruption also appeared in the news media. For years, allegations, which have never been proved, linked him with a scheme to profit from church tax breaks on duties for imported alcohol and tobacco in the 1990s.

But last week, as the selection process narrowed, Aleksandr Pochinok, a former tax minister, announced that Metropolitan Kirill had nothing to do with those deals, and the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda contended that the blame for the machinations rested with Metropolitan Kliment.

In December, a conservative Orthodox Web site, Pravaya.ru, published an open letter taking Metropolitan Kirill to task for ties to the Roman Catholic Church. As chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, he has been involved in the ecumenical movement, which promotes relations with other churches.

Finally, on Tuesday, the more than 700 delegates at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior had to choose from a shortlist of three candidates chosen by the Archbishops’ Council on Sunday. One of the three, Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk, credited with reviving the Orthodox church in Belarus and treading a careful path in relations with the Belarussian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, withdrew his name shortly before the vote on Tuesday.

Outside the cathedral, members of the Orthodox corps of Nashi, a pro-Kremlin youth movement, held banners in support of church unity. “The Holy Spirit will point out the worthy one,” read one.

For the first time, the delegates included members of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, an émigré group based in Manhattan that split after the Bolshevik Revolution and reunited with Moscow in 2007.

President Dmitri A. Medvedev sent a greeting, which was read out by his chief of staff, Sergei Naryshkin: “I am confident that the decision of the council will encourage fruitful cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state, the preservation of interfaith harmony in Russia, and the ideals of goodness, peace and justice.”

Metropolitan Kirill, 62, was born Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev in Leningrad to a clerical family. His father and grandfather served time in Soviet prison camps and later became priests.

Kirill was made archbishop of Smolensk in 1984 and metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad in 1991. In the 1990s, he and Patriarch Aleksy were accused by some critics of having served the K.G.B.

As chairman of the external relations department, he oversaw the drafting of the “social concept” of the Russian Orthodox Church, presented in 2000. It addresses church positions on social issues, including abortion, globalization and poverty. One of its most cited points allows for civil disobedience if the government violates Christian commandments.

In a newspaper interview in 1991, Metropolitan Kirill spoke of the influence on him of Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad and Novgorod, an ecumenist and theologian of the 1960s and ’70s.

“Maybe if not for the meeting with him, I would have become one of the classic dissidents,” Metropolitan Kirill said. “But Metropolitan Nikodim, fully sharing the convictions of my family, told me: ‘The church must speak with the surrounding world, including the authorities. The one who is internally spiritually stronger triumphs in this dialogue.’

[Pravoslavnik]

Well, credo.ru was one of the few extant websites posting news about the MP and the MP-ROCOR. The official ROCOR- Laurus website was put on moth balls after May 15, 2007. Nathaniel Kapner's CHURCH NEWS website also closed rather abruptly last year, without a syllable of explanation. Will the St. Euphrosynos Cafe be next? Russian Orthodox-related websites obviously seem to be disappearing almost as fast as newspaper journalists in Russia. Are "princes and principalities" in high Russian places THAT uncomfortable with the public having any real information? At this rate, the next thing we'll hear about the main corpus of the Russian Orthodox Church (MP) is that they have united en masse with Rome.

[MPROCORDsdnt]

Firstly, the ROC will not "unite en masse with Rome," and what will happen is that an officialdom, with a certain state sponsorship MAY accept a new Unia, but the bulk of believers and monasteries will reject it and great turmoil will come to the Russian church.

Secondly, there are quite a few hierarchs out there as well as "hierarchs" whose repute is, shall we say, dubious. That being said, the personal character of a given hierarch, especially the head of a local church, does not impugn the office. The sin only indicts the sinner, not the Church. Patriarch Kyrill is the challenge God has given us as the head of the Russian Orthodox church. Hopefully, he will do little harm and simply leave things better off. I personally would prefer another choice, but the church has conciliarly elected him.

I would have preferred other choices to Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky) and Metropolitan Anastassy--I am an Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, Archbishop Seraphim of Bulgaria, Archbishop Averky enthusiast. I would have preferred other choices to Metropolitan Vitaly, Metropolitan Laurus and Metropolitan Hilarion--all three weren't/aren't necessarily vibrant and witnessing Orthodox Traditionalists and paragons of ROCOR renewal. But this is what God gave us. So it is.

If there is any unia, the bulk of the faithful will reject it and Patriarch Kyrill and Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) will be out of jobs and retired in disgrace.

Thirdly, Orthodox forums come and go. Ten years ago, the Indiana List set the stage for all the ills we have today in ROCOR and sparked much of its implosion. Today, it is an inconsequential cyber tea room of a handful of people. What is important is that the Faith once proclaimed be continually witnessed without apologies and that people of like mind have venues to appreciate each others ideas and strengthen each other in our Holy Faith.

Jason Bently

[jgress]

Firstly, the ROC will not "unite en masse with Rome," and what will happen is that an officialdom, with a certain state sponsorship MAY accept a new Unia, but the bulk of believers and monasteries will reject it and great turmoil will come to the Russian church.

Secondly, there are quite a few hierarchs out there as well as "hierarchs" whose repute is, shall we say, dubious. That being said, the personal character of a given hierarch, especially the head of a local church, does not impugn the office. The sin only indicts the sinner, not the Church. Patriarch Kyrill is the challenge God has given us as the head of the Russian Orthodox church. Hopefully, he will do little harm and simply leave things better off. I personally would prefer another choice, but the church has conciliarly elected him.

I would have preferred other choices to Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky) and Metropolitan Anastassy--I am an Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, Archbishop Seraphim of Bulgaria, Archbishop Averky enthusiast. I would have preferred other choices to Metropolitan Vitaly, Metropolitan Laurus and Metropolitan Hilarion--all three weren't/aren't necessarily vibrant and witnessing Orthodox Traditionalists and paragons of ROCOR renewal. But this is what God gave us. So it is.

If there is any unia, the bulk of the faithful will reject it and Patriarch Kyrill and Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) will be out of jobs and retired in disgrace.

Thirdly, Orthodox forums come and go. Ten years ago, the Indiana List set the stage for all the ills we have today in ROCOR and sparked much of its implosion. Today, it is an inconsequential cyber tea room of a handful of people. What is important is that the Faith once proclaimed be continually witnessed without apologies and that people of like mind have venues to appreciate each others ideas and strengthen each other in our Holy Faith.

Jason Bently

Again, Jason, please be careful. Most True Orthodox, such as myself, do not believe Patriarch Kirill is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, but a heretic and an impostor.

[MPROCORDsdnt]

Um, "be careful" in stating the accepted position of 99% of the Orthodox world? What? And you are baiting Bolshevik censorship? Seriously now. Conciliarity is the only Orthodox thing which establishes heresy. If Patriarch Kyrill is a heretic, which could be true, CALL AT LEAST AN ECCLESIASTICAL COURT to decide the matter, but until that time, he is the head of the Russian Orthodox church. Papal ecclesiology is not Orthodox, especially in a vagante guise, and is patently condemned by the Holy Fathers and Canons as schismatic and heretical. So in pointing one finger at our Patriarch from the cadres of Msgnr Rotov, you point three back at yourself.

I am NOT a "TOC" and do not participate in their discussions. I specifically limit myself to "world Orthodoxy" and am here to attempt to share a dialogue of its understandings vis a vis certain claims and deviations of others to arrive at mutual understanding. Free discourse brings that about, nor censorship of other views.

Jason Bently