(often "INRI") affixed by the Roman authorities to Christ's cross during his crucifixion.
Apostle Andrew One of the foundational narratives associated with the history of
Orthodoxy in Russia is found in the 12th-century
Primary Chronicle, which says that the
Apostle Andrew visited
Scythia and
Greek colonies along the northern coast of the
Black Sea before making his way to
Chersonesus in
Crimea. According to the legend, Andrew reached the future location of
Kiev and foretold the foundation of a great Christian city with many churches. Then, "he came to the [land of the]
Slovenians where
Novgorod now [stands]" and observed the locals, before eventually arriving in
Rome. Despite the lack of historical evidence supporting this narrative, modern church historians in Russia have often incorporated this tale into their studies.
Kievan Rus' In the 10th century, Christianity began to take root in
Kievan Rus'. Towards the end of the reign of
Igor, Christians are mentioned among the
Varangians. In the text about the treaty with the
Byzantine Empire in 944–945, the chronicler also records the oath-taking ceremony that took place in
Constantinople for Igor's envoys as well as the equivalent ceremony that took place in Kiev. Igor's wife
Olga was baptized sometime in the mid-10th century; however, scholars have disputed the exact year and place of her conversion, with dates ranging from 946 to 960. Most scholars tend to agree that she was baptized in Constantinople, though some argue that her conversion took place in Kiev. Olga's son
Sviatoslav opposed conversion, despite persuasion from his mother, and there is little information about Christianity in sources in the period between 969 and 988. Ten years after seizing power, Grand Prince
Vladimir was baptized in 988 and began
Christianizing his people upon his return. That year was decreed by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988 as the date of the Christianization of the country. According to the
Chronicle, Vladimir had previously sent envoys to investigate the different faiths. After receiving glowing reports about Constantinople, he captured Chersonesus in Crimea and demanded that the sister of
Basil II be sent there. The marriage took place on the condition that Vladimir would be also baptized there. Vladimir had lent considerable military support to the Byzantine emperor and may have besieged the city due to it having sided with the rebellious
Bardas Phokas. By the early 11th century, Christianity was established as the state religion. By the early 13th century, some 40 episcopal sees had been established, all of which ultimately answered to Constantinople.
Transfer of the see to Moscow; de facto independence of the Russian Church After Kiev lost its significance following the
Mongol invasions, Metropolitan
Maximus moved his seat to
Vladimir in 1299. His successor,
Peter, found himself caught in the conflict between the principalities of
Tver and
Moscow for supremacy in
northwest Russia. Peter moved his residence to
Moscow in 1325 and became a strong ally of the prince of Moscow. During Peter's tenure in Moscow, the foundation for the
Dormition Cathedral was laid and Peter was buried there. By choosing to reside and be buried in Moscow, Peter had designated Moscow as the future center of the Russian Orthodox Church. Peter was succeeded by
Theognostus, who, like his predecessor, pursued policies that supported the rise of the Moscow principality. During the first four years of his tenure, the Dormition Cathedral was completed and an additional four stone churches were constructed in Moscow. By the end of 1331, Theognostus was able to restore ecclesiastical control over Lithuania. Theognostus also proceeded with the canonization of Peter in 1339, which helped to increase Moscow's prestige. His successor
Alexius lost ecclesiastical over Lithuania in 1355, but kept the traditional title. against Polish troops during the
Time of Troubles. Painting by
Sergey Miloradovich. On 5 July 1439, at the
Council of Florence, the only Russian prelate present at the council signed the union, which, according to his companion, was only under duress. Metropolitan
Isidore left
Florence on 6 September 1439 and returned to Moscow on 19 March 1441. The chronicles say that three days after arriving in Moscow, Grand Prince
Vasily II arrested Isidore and placed him under supervision in the
Chudov Monastery. According to the chroniclers of the grand prince, "the princes, the boyars and many others—and especially the Russian bishops—remained silent, slumbered and fell asleep" until "the divinely wise, Christ-loving sovereign, Grand Prince Vasily Vasilyevich shamed Isidor and called him not his pastor and teacher, but a wicked and baneful wolf". Despite the chronicles calling him a heretical
apostate, Isidore was recognized as the lawful metropolitan by Vasily II until he left Moscow on 15 September 1441. For the following seven years, the seat of the metropolitan remained vacant. Vasily II defeated the rebellious
Dmitry Shemyaka and returned to Moscow in February 1447. On 15 December 1448, a council of Russian bishops elected
Jonah as metropolitan, without the consent of the patriarch of Constantinople, which marked the beginning of
autocephaly of the Russian Church. Although not all Russian clergy supported Jonah, the move was subsequently justified in the Russian point of view following the
fall of Constantinople in 1453, which was interpreted as divine punishment. While it is possible that the failure to obtain the blessing from Constantinople was not intentional, nevertheless, this marked the beginning of independence of the Russian Church.
Autocephaly and schism Priest,
Nikita Pustosviat, Disputing the Matters of Faith with
Patriarch Joachim'', painting by
Vasily Perov Jonah's policy as metropolitan was to recover the areas lost to the Uniate church. He was able to include Lithuania and Kiev to his title, but not
Galicia. Lithuania was separated from his jurisdiction in 1458, and the influence of Catholicism increased in those regions. As soon as Vasily II heard about the ordination of
Gregory as metropolitan of the newly established
metropolis of Kiev, he sent a delegation to the king of Poland warning him not to accept Gregory; Jonah also attempted to persuade feudal princes and nobles who resided in Lithuania to continue to side with Orthodoxy, but this attempt failed. The fall of Constantinople and the beginning of autocephaly of the Russian Church contributed to political consolidation in Russia and the development of a new identity based on awareness that Moscow was only metropolitanate in the Orthodox
oikoumene that remained politically independent. The formulation of the idea of Moscow as the "
third Rome" is primarily associated with the monk
Philotheus of Pskov, who stated that "Moscow alone shines over all the earth more radiantly than the sun" because of its fidelity to the faith. The marriage of
Ivan III to
Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, and the defeat of the Tatars, helped to solidify this view. By the turn of the 16th century, the consolidation of Orthodoxy in Russia continued as Archbishop
Gennady of Novgorod created the first complete manuscript translation of the Bible into
Church Slavonic in 1499, known as
Gennady's Bible. At the same time, two movements within the Russian Church had emerged with differing ecclesial visions.
Nilus of Sora (1433–1508) led the
non-possessors, who opposed monastic landholding except for the purposes of charity in addition to strong involvement of the church in the affairs of the state, while
Joseph of Volotsk (1439–1515) led a movement that supported strong church involvement in the state's affairs. By 1551, the
Stoglav Synod addressed the lack of uniformity in existing ecclesial practices. Metropolitan
Macarius also collected "all holy books... available in the Russian land" and completed the
Grand Menaion, which was influential in shaping the narrative tradition of Russian Orthodoxy. In 1589, during the reign of
Feodor I and under the direction of
Boris Godunov, the metropolitan of Moscow,
Job, was consecrated as the first Russian patriarch with the blessing of
Jeremias II of Constantinople. In the decree establishing the
patriarchate, the whole Russian tsardom is called a "third Rome". By the mid-17th century, the religious practices of the Russian Orthodox Church were distinct from those of the
Greek Orthodox Church. Patriarch
Nikon reformed the church in order to bring most of its practices back into accommodation with the contemporary forms of Greek Orthodox worship. Nikon's efforts to correct the translations of texts and institute liturgical reforms were not accepted by all. Archpriest
Avvakum accused the patriarch of "defiling the faith" and "pouring wrathful fury upon the Russian land". The result was
a schism, with those who resisted the new practices being known as the
Old Believers. In the aftermath of the
Treaty of Pereyaslav, the
Ottomans, supposedly acting on behalf of the Russian regent
Sophia Alekseyevna, pressured the
patriarch of Constantinople into
transferring the metropolis of Kiev from the jurisdiction of Constantinople to that of Moscow. The handover brought millions of faithful and half a dozen dioceses under the ultimate administrative care of the patriarch of Moscow, and later of the Holy Synod of Russia, leading to a significant Ukrainian presence in the Russian Church, which continued well into the 18th century. The exact terms and conditions of the handover of the metropolis remains a contested issue.
Synodal period Following the death of Patriarch
Adrian in 1700,
Peter I of Russia () decided against an election of a new patriarch, and drawing on the clergy that came from Ukraine, he appointed
Stefan Yavorsky as
locum tenens. Peter believed that Russia's resources, including the church, could be used to establish a modern European state and he sought to strengthen the authority of the monarch. He was also inspired by church–state relations in the West and therefore brought the institutional structure of the church in line with other ministries.
Theophan Prokopovich wrote Peter's
Spiritual Regulation, which no longer legally recognized the separation of the church and the state. Peter replaced the patriarch with a council known as the
Most Holy Synod in 1721, which consisted of appointed bishops, monks, and priests. The church was also overseen by an ober-procurator that would directly report to the emperor. Peter's reforms marked the beginning of the Synodal period of the Russian Church, which would last until 1917. In order to make monasticism more socially useful, Peter began the processes that would eventually lead to the large-scale secularization of monastic landholdings in 1764 under
Catherine II. 822 monasteries were closed between 1701 and 1805, and monastic communities became highly regulated, receiving funds from the state for support. The late 18th century saw the rise of
starchestvo under
Paisiy Velichkovsky and his disciples at the
Optina Monastery. This marked a beginning of a significant spiritual revival in the Russian Church after a lengthy period of modernization, personified by such figures as
Demetrius of Rostov and
Platon of Moscow.
Aleksey Khomyakov,
Ivan Kireevsky and other lay theologians with
Slavophile leanings elaborated some key concepts of the renovated Orthodox doctrine, including that of
sobornost. The resurgence of Eastern Orthodoxy was reflected in Russian literature, an example is the figure of
Starets Zosima in
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's
Brothers Karamazov. In the Russian Orthodox Church, the
clergy, over time, formed a hereditary
caste of priests. Marrying outside of these priestly families was strictly forbidden; indeed, some
bishops did not even tolerate their
clergy marrying outside of the priestly families of their diocese.
Fin-de-siècle religious renaissance in
Dresden, built in the 1870s In 1909, a volume of essays appeared under the title
Vekhi ("Milestones" or "Landmarks"), authored by a group of leading left-wing intellectuals, including
Sergei Bulgakov,
Peter Struve and former
Marxists. It is possible to see a similarly renewed vigor and variety in religious life and spirituality among the lower classes, especially after the upheavals of 1905. Among the peasantry, there was widespread interest in spiritual-ethical literature and non-conformist moral-spiritual movements, an upsurge in pilgrimage and other devotions to sacred spaces and objects (especially icons), persistent beliefs in the presence and power of the supernatural (apparitions, possession, walking-dead, demons, spirits, miracles and magic), the renewed vitality of local "ecclesial communities" actively shaping their own ritual and spiritual lives, sometimes in the absence of clergy, and defining their own sacred places and forms of piety. Also apparent was the proliferation of what the Orthodox establishment branded as "sectarianism", including both non-Eastern Orthodox Christian denominations, notably
Baptists, and various forms of popular Orthodoxy and mysticism.
Russian Revolution and Civil War In 1914, there were 55,173 Russian Orthodox
churches and 29,593
chapels, 112,629
priests and
deacons, 550
monasteries and 475
convents with a total of 95,259 monks and nuns in Russia. The year 1917 was a major turning point in Russian history, and also the Russian Orthodox Church. In early March 1917 (O.S.), the Tsar was
forced to abdicate, the
Russian empire began to implode, and the government's direct control of the Church was all but over by August 1917. On 15 August (O.S.), in the Moscow
Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin, the
Local (Pomestniy) Council of the ROC, the first such convention since the late 17th century, opened. The council continued its sessions until September 1918 and adopted a number of important reforms, including the restoration of
patriarchate, a decision taken 3 days after the
Bolsheviks
overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd on 25 October (O.S.). On 5 November, Metropolitan
Tikhon of Moscow was selected as the first Russian patriarch after about 200 years of Synodal rule. In early February 1918, the Bolshevik-controlled government of Soviet Russia enacted the
Decree on separation of church from state and school from church that proclaimed
separation of church and state in Russia, freedom to "profess any religion or profess none", deprived religious organisations of the right to own any property and legal status. Legal religious activity in the territories controlled by Bolsheviks was effectively reduced to services and sermons inside church buildings. The Decree and attempts by Bolshevik officials to requisition church property caused sharp resentment on the part of the ROC clergy and provoked violent clashes on some occasions: on 1 February (19 January O.S.), hours after the bloody confrontation in Petrograd's
Alexander Nevsky Lavra between the Bolsheviks trying to take control of the monastery's premises and the believers,
Patriarch Tikhon issued a proclamation that
anathematised the perpetrators of such acts. The church was caught in the crossfire of the
Russian Civil War that began later in 1918, and church leadership, despite their attempts to be politically neutral (from the autumn of 1918), as well as the clergy generally were perceived by the Soviet authorities as a "counter-revolutionary" force and thus subject to suppression and eventual liquidation. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.
Soviet period The Soviet Union, formally created in December 1922, was the first state to have elimination of religion as an ideological objective espoused by the country's ruling political party, which held the doctrine of
state atheism. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated materialism and atheism in schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organized religions were never outlawed. Orthodox Christian clergy and active believers, among Christians from other denominations, were treated by the Soviet law-enforcement apparatus as anti-revolutionary elements and were habitually subjected to formal prosecutions on political charges, arrests, exiles,
imprisonment in camps, and later could also be incarcerated in
mental hospitals. However, the Soviet policy vis-a-vis organised religion vacillated over time between, on the one hand, a utopian determination to substitute secular rationalism for what they considered to be an outmoded "superstitious" worldview and, on the other, pragmatic acceptance of the tenaciousness of religious faith and institutions. In any case, religious beliefs and practices did persist, not only in the domestic and private spheres but also in the scattered public spaces allowed by a state that recognized its failure to eradicate religion and the political dangers of an unrelenting culture war. in
Harbin, northeast China. In 1921, Harbin was home of at least 100,000
White Russian émigrés. The Russian Orthodox church was drastically weakened in May 1922, when the
Renovated (Living) Church, a reformist movement backed by the Soviet secret police, broke away from Patriarch Tikhon (also see the
Josephites and the
Russian True Orthodox Church), a move that caused division among clergy and faithful that persisted until 1946. Between 1917 and 1935, 130,000 Eastern Orthodox priests were arrested. Of these, 95,000 were put to death. Many thousands of victims of persecution became recognized in a special canon of saints known as the "
new martyrs and confessors of Russia". When Patriarch Tikhon died in 1925, the Soviet authorities forbade patriarchal election. Patriarchal
locum tenens (acting patriarch)
Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky, 1887–1944), going against the opinion of a major part of the church's parishes, in 1927 issued a declaration accepting the Soviet authority over the church as legitimate, pledging the church's cooperation with the government and condemning political dissent within the church. By this declaration, Sergius granted himself authority that he, being a deputy of imprisoned
Metropolitan Peter and acting against his will, had no right to assume according to the XXXIV
Apostolic canon, which led to a split with the
Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia abroad and the
Russian True Orthodox Church (Russian Catacomb Church) within the Soviet Union, as they allegedly remained faithful to the Canons of the Apostles, declaring the part of the church led by Metropolitan Sergius
schism, sometimes coined
Sergianism. Due to this canonical disagreement it is disputed which church has been the legitimate successor to the Russian Orthodox Church that had existed before 1925. In 1927, Metropolitan
Evlogy of Paris broke with the ROCOR (along with Metropolitan
Platon (Rozhdestvensky) of New York, leader of the Russian Metropolia in America). In 1930, after taking part in a prayer service in London in supplication for Christians suffering under the Soviets, Evlogy was removed from office by Sergius and replaced. Most of Evlogy's parishes in Western Europe remained loyal to him; Evlogy then petitioned Ecumenical Patriarch
Photius II to be received under his canonical care and was received in 1931, making a number of parishes of Russian Orthodox Christians outside Russia, especially in Western Europe an
Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as the
Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox churches in Western Europe. in Moscow, under the policy of
state atheism of the USSR With aid from the
Methodist Church, two Russian Orthodox seminaries were reopened in the 1920s as a result of their
ecumenical commitments. Moreover, in the
1929 elections, the Orthodox Church attempted to formulate itself as a full-scale opposition group to the Communist Party, and attempted to run candidates of its own against the Communist candidates. Article 124 of the
1936 Soviet Constitution officially allowed for freedom of religion within the Soviet Union, and along with initial statements of it being a multi-candidate election, the Church again attempted to run its own religious candidates in the
1937 elections. However the support of multicandidate elections was retracted several months before the elections were held and in neither 1929 nor 1937 were any candidates of the Orthodox Church elected. After
Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941,
Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. In the early hours of 5 September 1943, Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky),
Alexius (Simansky) and
Nicholas (Yarushevich) had a meeting with Stalin and received permission to convene a council on 8 September 1943, which elected Sergius Patriarch of Moscow and all the Rus'. This is considered by some as violation of the
Apostolic canon, as no church hierarch could be consecrated by secular authorities.
Persecution under Khrushchev A new and widespread
persecution of the Christians was subsequently instituted under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. A second round of repression, harassment and church closures took place between 1959 and 1964 when
Nikita Khrushchev was in office. The number of Orthodox churches fell from around 22,000 in 1959 to around 8,000 in 1965; priests, monks and faithful were killed or imprisoned and the number of functioning monasteries was reduced to less than twenty. Subsequent to Khrushchev's ousting, the Church and the government remained on unfriendly terms until 1988. In practice, the most important aspect of this conflict was that openly religious people could not join the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which meant that they could not hold any political office. However, among the general population, large numbers remained religious. Some Orthodox believers and even priests took part in the
dissident movement and became
prisoners of conscience. The Orthodox priests
Gleb Yakunin, Sergiy Zheludkov and others spent years in Soviet prisons and exile for their efforts in defending freedom of worship. Among the prominent figures of that time were Dmitri Dudko and
Aleksandr Men. Although he tried to keep away from practical work of the dissident movement intending to better fulfil his calling as a priest, there was a spiritual link between Men and many of the dissidents. For some of them he was a friend; for others, a godfather; for many (including
Yakunin), a spiritual father. According to
Metropolitan Vladimir, by 1988 the number of functioning churches in the
Soviet Union had fallen to 6,893 and the number of functioning convents and monasteries to just 21. In 1987 in the
Russian SFSR, between 40% and 50% of newborn babies (depending on the region) were baptized. Over 60% of all deceased received Christian funeral services.
Glasnost and evidence of collaboration with the KGB Beginning in the late 1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the new political and social freedoms resulted in the return of many church buildings to the church, so they could be restored by local parishioners. A pivotal point in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church came in 1988, the millennial anniversary of the
Christianization of Kievan Rus'. Throughout the summer of that year, major government-supported celebrations took place in Moscow and other cities; many older churches and some monasteries were reopened. An implicit ban on religious propaganda on state TV was finally lifted. For the first time in the
history of the Soviet Union, people could watch live transmissions of church services on television.
Gleb Yakunin, a critic of the
Moscow Patriarchate who was one of those who briefly gained access to the
KGB's archives in the early 1990s, argued that the Moscow Patriarchate was "practically a subsidiary, a sister company of the KGB". Critics charge that the archives showed the extent of active participation of the top ROC hierarchs in the KGB efforts overseas.
George Trofimoff, the highest-ranking US military officer ever indicted for, and convicted of,
espionage by the
United States and sentenced to
life imprisonment on 27 September 2001, had been "recruited into the service of the KGB" by Igor Susemihl (a.k.a. Zuzemihl), a bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church (subsequently, a high-ranking hierarch—the ROC Metropolitan Iriney of
Vienna, who died in July 1999). Konstanin Kharchev, former chairman of the Soviet Council on Religious Affairs, explained: "Not a single candidate for the office of bishop or any other high-ranking office, much less a member of the Holy Synod, went through without confirmation by the Central Committee of the
CPSU and the
KGB". Patriarch Alexy II, acknowledged that compromises were made with the Soviet government by bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate, himself included, and he publicly repented for these compromises.
Post-Soviet era Patriarch Aleksey II (1990–2008) of Moscow and All Russia Metropolitan
Alexy (Ridiger) of
Leningrad, ascended the patriarchal throne in 1990 and presided over the partial return of Orthodox Christianity to Russian society after 70 years of repression, transforming the ROC to something resembling its pre-communist appearance; some 15,000 churches had been re-opened or built by the end of his tenure, and the process of recovery and rebuilding has continued under his successor
Patriarch Kirill. According to official figures, in 2016 the Church had 174 dioceses, 361 bishops, and 34,764 parishes served by 39,800 clergy. There were 926 monasteries and 30 theological schools. The Russian Church also sought to fill the ideological vacuum left by the
collapse of Communism and even, in the opinion of some analysts, became "a separate branch of power". In August 2000, the ROC adopted its Basis of the Social Concept and in July 2008, its Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights. ,
Moscow, 1990 Under Patriarch Aleksey, there were difficulties in the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the
Vatican, especially since 2002, when
Pope John Paul II created a
Catholic diocesan structure for Russian territory. The leaders of the Russian Church saw this action as a throwback to prior attempts by the Vatican to
proselytize the Russian Orthodox faithful to become Roman Catholic. This point of view was based upon the stance of the Russian Orthodox Church (and the
Eastern Orthodox Church) that the Church of Rome is in schism, after breaking off from the Orthodox Church. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, while acknowledging the primacy of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia, believed that the small Roman Catholic minority in Russia, in continuous existence since at least the 18th century, should be served by a fully developed church hierarchy with a presence and status in Russia, just as the Russian Orthodox Church is present in other countries (including constructing a cathedral in Rome, near the
Vatican). There occurred strident conflicts with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, most notably over the Orthodox Church in
Estonia in the mid-1990s, which resulted in
unilateral suspension of eucharistic relationship between the churches by the ROC. The tension lingered on and could be observed at the meeting in Ravenna in early October 2007 of participants in the Orthodox–Catholic Dialogue: the representative of the Moscow Patriarchate, Bishop
Hilarion Alfeyev, walked out of the meeting due to the presence of representatives from the
Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church which is in the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. At the meeting, prior to the departure of the Russian delegation, there were also substantive disagreements about the wording of a proposed joint statement among the Orthodox representatives. After the departure of the Russian delegation, the remaining Orthodox delegates approved the form which had been advocated by the representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Ecumenical See's representative in Ravenna said that Hilarion's position "should be seen as an expression of authoritarianism whose goal is to exhibit the influence of the Moscow Church. But like last year in Belgrade, all Moscow achieved was to isolate itself once more since no other Orthodox Church followed its lead, remaining instead faithful to Constantinople." , Siberia Canon
Michael Bourdeaux, former president of the
Keston Institute, said in January 2008 that "the Moscow Patriarchate acts as though it heads a state church, while the few Orthodox clergy who oppose the church-state symbiosis face severe criticism, even loss of livelihood." Such a view is backed up by other observers of Russian political life. Clifford J. Levy of
The New York Times wrote in April 2008: "Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin's surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers. [...] This close alliance between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church has become a defining characteristic of Mr. Putin's tenure, a mutually reinforcing choreography that is usually described here as working '
in symphony'." Throughout Patriarch Alexy's reign, the massive program of costly restoration and reopening of devastated churches and monasteries (as well as the construction of new ones) was criticized for having eclipsed the church's principal mission of evangelizing. On 5 December 2008, the day of Patriarch Alexy's death, the
Financial Times said: "While the church had been a force for liberal reform under the Soviet Union, it soon became a center of strength for conservatives and nationalists in the post-communist era. Alexei's death could well result in an even more conservative church."
Patriarch Kirill (since 2009) , Russian Far East On 27 January 2009, the
ROC Local Council elected Metropolitan
Kirill of Smolensk Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus′ by 508 votes out of a total of 700. He was enthroned on 1 February 2009. Patriarch Kirill implemented reforms in the administrative structure of the Moscow Patriarchate: on 27 July 2011 the Holy Synod established the Central Asian Metropolitan District, reorganizing the structure of the Church in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. In addition, on 6 October 2011, at the request of the Patriarch, the Holy Synod introduced the metropoly (Russian: митрополия, mitropoliya), administrative structure bringing together neighboring eparchies. Under Patriarch Kirill, the ROC continued to maintain close ties with the Kremlin enjoying the patronage of president
Vladimir Putin, who has sought to mobilize Russian Orthodoxy both inside and outside Russia. Patriarch Kirill endorsed Putin's
election in 2012, referring in February to Putin's tenure in the 2000s as "God's miracle". Nevertheless, Russian inside sources were quoted in the autumn 2017 as saying that Putin's relationship with Patriarch Kirill had been deteriorating since 2014 due to the fact that the presidential administration had been misled by the Moscow Patriarchate as to the extent of support for
pro-Russian uprising in eastern Ukraine; also, due to Kirill's personal unpopularity he had come to be viewed as a political liability.
Schism with Constantinople In 2018, the Moscow Patriarchate's traditional rivalry with the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, coupled with Moscow's anger over the decision to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian church by the Ecumenical Patriarch, led the ROC to boycott the
Holy Great Council that had been prepared by all the Orthodox Churches for decades. The Holy Synod of the ROC, at its session on 15 October 2018,
severed full communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The decision was taken in response to the move made by the Patriarchate of Constantinople a few days prior that effectively ended the Moscow Patriarchate's jurisdiction over Ukraine and promised
autocephaly to Ukraine, the ROC's and the Kremlin's fierce opposition notwithstanding. While the Ecumenical Patriarchate finalised the establishment of the
Orthodox Church of Ukraine on 5 January 2019, the ROC continued to claim that the only legitimate Orthodox jurisdiction in the country,
was its branch. Under a law of Ukraine adopted at the end of 2018, the latter was required to change its official title so as to disclose its affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church based in an "aggressor state". On 11 December 2019 the
Supreme Court of Ukraine allowed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) to retain its name. In October 2019, the ROC unilaterally severed communion with the
Church of Greece following the latter's recognition of the Ukrainian autocephaly. On 3 November, Patriarch Kirill failed to commemorate the Primate of the Church of Greece, Archbishop
Ieronymos II of Athens, during a liturgy in Moscow. Additionally, the ROC leadership imposed pilgrimage bans for its faithful in respect of a number of dioceses in Greece, including
that of Athens. On 8 November 2019, the Russian Orthodox Church announced that Patriarch Kirill would stop commemorating the
Patriarch of Alexandria and all Africa after the latter and
his Church recognized the OCU that same day. On 27 September 2021, the ROC established a religious
day of remembrance for all Eastern Orthodox Christians which were persecuted by the Soviet regime. This day is the 30 October.
Russian invasion of Ukraine condemned "Russia's war against Ukraine" and is determined to seek greater independence from Moscow. He also appealed directly to Putin, asking for an immediate end to the "fratricidal war". In April 2022, after the Russian invasion, many UOC-MP parishes signaled their intention to switch allegiance to the
Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The attitude and stance of
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to the war is one of the oft quoted reasons. The head of the
Russian Orthodox Church in Lithuania, Metropolitan , called Patriarch Kirill's "political statements about the war" his "personal opinion". On 27 February 2022, a group of 286 Russian Orthodox priests published an open letter calling for an end to the war and criticised the suppression of non-violent
anti-war protests in Russia. On 6 March 2022, Russian Orthodox priest of Moscow Patriarchate's
Kostroma Diocese was fined by Russian authorities for anti-war sermon and stressing the importance of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". Some priests in the Russian Orthodox Church have publicly
opposed the invasion, with some facing arrest under the
Russian 2022 war censorship laws. In
Kazakhstan, Russian Orthodox priest Iakov Vorontsov, who signed an open letter condemning the invasion of Ukraine, was forced to resign. Former Russian Orthodox priest Father Grigory Michnov-Vaytenko, head of the —a recognized religious organization founded by other dissident priests such as Father
Gleb Yakunin—said that "The [Russian Orthodox] church now works like the
commissars did in the Soviet Union. And people of course see it. People don't like it. Especially after February [2022], a lot of people have left the church, both priests and people who were there for years." complex after Russian shelling in May 2022 Patriarch Kirill has referred to the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as "current events" and has avoided using terms like
war or
invasion, thereby complying with Russian censorship law. Kirill approves the invasion, and has blessed the Russian soldiers fighting there. As a consequence, several priests of the
Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine have stopped mentioning Kirill's name during the divine service. The Moscow patriarchate views Ukraine as a part of their "
canonical territory". Kirill has said that the Russian army has chosen a very correct way. Kirill sees
gay pride parades as a part of the reason behind Russian warfare against Ukraine. He has said that the war is not physically, but rather metaphysically, important. Following the
Bucha massacre, Kirill said that his faithful should be ready to "protect our home" under any circumstances. On 6 March 2022 (
Forgiveness Sunday holiday), during the liturgy in the Church of Christ the Savior, he justified Russia's attack on Ukraine, stating that it was necessary to side with "
Donbas" (i.e.
Donetsk and
Luhansk People's Republic), where he said there is an ongoing 8-year "genocide" by Ukraine and where, Kirill said, Ukraine wants to enforce
gay pride events upon local population. Despite the holiday being dedicated to the concept of forgiveness, Kirill said there cannot be forgiveness without delivering "justice" first, otherwise it's a capitulation and weakness. The speech came under international scrutiny, as Kirill parroted President Putin's claim that Russia was fighting "fascism" in Ukraine. Throughout the speech, Kirill did not use the term "Ukrainian", but rather referred to both Russians and Ukrainians simply as "Holy Russians", also claiming Russian soldiers in Ukraine were "laying down their lives for a friend",
referencing the
Gospel of John. In a letter to the
World Council of Churches (WCC) sent in March 2022, Kirill justified the attack on Ukraine by NATO enlargement, the protection of Russian language, and the establishment of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. In this letter, he did not express condolences over deaths among Ukrainians. Kirill participated in a
Zoom video call with
Pope Francis on 16 March 2022, of which Francis stated in an interview that Kirill "read from a piece of paper he was holding in his hand all the reasons that justify the Russian invasion." Representatives of the
Vatican have criticized Kirill for his lack of willingness to seek peace in Ukraine. On 3 April, the former
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said there was a strong case for expelling the Russian Orthodox Church from the WCC, saying, "When a Church is actively supporting a war of aggression, failing to condemn nakedly obvious breaches of any kind of ethical conduct in wartime, then other Churches do have the right to raise the question ... I am still waiting for any senior member of the Orthodox hierarchy to say that the slaughter of the innocent is condemned unequivocally by all forms of Christianity." The Russian Orthodox St Nicholas church in
Amsterdam, Netherlands, has declared that it is no longer possible to function within the Moscow patriarchate because of the attitude that Kirill has taken to the Russian invasion, and instead requested to join the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The
Russian Orthodox Church in Lithuania has declared that they do not share the political views and perception of Kirill and therefore are seeking independence from Moscow. On 10 April 2022, 200 priests from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) released an open request to the
primates of the other
autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Churches, asking them to convene a Council of Primates of the Ancient Eastern Churches at the Pan-Orthodox level and try Kirill for the heresy of preaching the "Doctrine of the
Russian world" and the moral crimes of "blessing the war against Ukraine and fully supporting the aggressive nature of Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine." They noted that they "can't continue to remain in any form of
canonical subordination to the Moscow Patriarch", and requested that the Council of Primates "bring Patriarch Kirill to justice and deprive him of the right to hold the patriarchal throne." When the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) removed itself from the Moscow Patriarchate on 27 May 2022, Kirill claimed that the "spirits of malice" wanted to separate the Russian and Ukrainian peoples but they will not succeed. The Ukrainian church released a declaration in which it stated "it had adopted relevant additions and changes to the Statute on the Administration of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which testify to the complete autonomy and independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church." The church did not publish its new constitution. Although in this Ukrainian Orthodox Church clergymen now claims that 'any provisions that at least somehow hinted at or indicated the connection with Moscow were excluded' the Russian Orthodox Church ignores this and continues to include UOC-MP clerics in its various commissions or working groups despite these individuals not agreeing to this nor even wanting to be included. during Putin's
Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly on 21 February 2023 Cardinal
Kurt Koch, president of the
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said that the patriarch's legitimization of the "brutal and absurd war" is "a heresy". Kirill supported
the mobilization of citizens to go to the front in Ukraine, he urged citizens to fulfill their military duty and that if they gave their lives for their country they will be with God in his kingdom. North Macedonia and Bulgaria expelled senior members of the Russian Orthodox Church for acts contravening their national security in 2023, raising questions about the church using their position to spy and to spread Russian political propaganda. In 2023
Patriarch Bartholomew criticised the Russian church, which he says is teaching a "theology of war". "This is the theology that the sister Church of Russia began to teach, trying to justify an unjust, unholy, unprovoked, diabolical war against a sovereign and independent country—Ukraine." In January 2024, the senior priest of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in
Ostankino, Moscow, was removed from his post for calling for peace. During the
World Russian People's Council headed and led by Kirill of late March 2024 a document was approved that stated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a "
Holy War". The document stated that the war had the goal of "protecting the world from the onslaught of
globalism and the victory of
the West, which has fallen into
Satanism". Ukrainian religious organizations affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church will be banned 9 months from the moment the issues the order, if this religious organization does not sever relations with the Russian Orthodox Church in accordance with
Orthodox canon law. This prohibition did not extend to
Eastern Orthodoxy in general, contrary to what some
online claims asserted. ==Structure and organization==