Erie cleric 'used as pawn' in Russian church rift
by BY DANA MASSING, Erie Times News, June 1, 2007
An ailing elderly Erie bishop is being drawn into what could be a new schism in the Russian Orthodox Church.
A group that wants to establish a new church authority claims Bishop Daniel of Erie is on their side but is being held under "house arrest."
But Bishop Daniel, 76, who uses only a first name like other bishops in his church, said Thursday he wants nothing to do with efforts to split that church.
"I am against it," he said.
Bishop Daniel spoke to the Erie Times-News in his home the day after reports appeared in English on the LiveJournal Web site that he was being held in unsanitary conditions.
As the bishop sat in a chair in his neat but simply decorated Erie living room Thursday, he called those reports "a plain lie."
Bishop Daniel is part of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
That church and the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia recently reconciled after an 80-year schism that began with the Bolshevik Revolution and widened with communism.
Bishop Daniel opposed the reconciliation, believing it to be premature. Because of that, a group that's trying to form a new hierarchy wanted him to be one of the two bishops it needs to lead it.
"He's absolutely being used as a pawn," said the Rev. Pimen Simon of Erie's Russian Orthodox Church of the Nativity of Christ. It's the one parish in Bishop Daniel's diocese.
Three out-of-town priests visited the bishop's home May 22, and it's an account of that visit at "Nathanael Speaks!" on LiveJournal that includes the claims of house arrest.
None of the men, identified online as Hegumen Andronik, Father Sergei Serzhanov and Protodeacon Iov Chemerov, could be reached by the Erie Times-News. A fourth man, Father Victor Dobroff, who reportedly was monitoring the event by cell phone,
also could not be reached.
During their visit, Bishop Daniel signed a document stating he "formed a provisional supreme ecclesiastical authority." On Thursday, Bishop Daniel said, "I realized too late I should not have done that."
In the document, which Bishop Daniel said he didn't compose, he gives his assent to efforts by Bishop Agafangel of the Ukraine to establish the authority.
Bishop Agafangel couldn't be reached Thursday via e-mail.
Simon responded to the Web accounts in a statement sent Thursday to his parish council.
He called the online claims "disgraceful" and said Bishop Daniel, who has suffered several health problems in recent years, "desires only to be left alone."