TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061890/0618611.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.8 KB | 141 lines

                                                                                RELIGION, Page 71

Victory for a Dark Horse


An Estonian is elected head of a re-energized Orthodox Church

By RICHARD N. OSTLING -- Reported by Ann Blackman/Moscow, with
other bureaus


    The Pope may no longer be an Italian, but it goes without
saying that the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia must be a
Russian. Until last week, that is, when yet another unbreakable
rule was broken in the Soviet Union. At the resplendently
gilded Trinity-St. Sergius monastery in Zagorsk, ceremonial
bells and chimes greeted the election of an Estonian of German
stock, Metropolitan Aleksy of Leningrad, as the next Patriarch.
It is the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution that the
Russian Orthodox Church has chosen its leader free of
manipulation by the atheistic regime.

    The new Patriarch draws immediate authority and credibility
from his election by a 330-member Local Council with a bishop,
priest and lay delegate representing each of the nation's
dioceses. Aleksy will reign over a flock of some 50 million
members (in contrast to 19 million Communists). As Mikhail
Gorbachev fully recognizes, Orthodoxy could provide a unique
source of continuity, stability and morality amid escalating
Soviet turmoil. Enthroned at age 61 with life tenure, Patriarch
Aleksy is quite likely to be a national leader long after
Gorbachev leaves power.

    Amazingly, there was no ethnic Russian in the race at all.
Aleksy's two competitors, Metropolitans Vladimir of Rostov and
Filaret of Kiev, are both natives of the Ukraine. The three
nominees were elected by the Soviet Union's bishops from a list
of all 75 of their eligible colleagues, then proposed to the
full church council. The council rejected bids to add other
candidates, then chose Aleksy in two secret ballots.

    Vladimir, who ranked second in the bishops' nominations,
followed Aleksy as administrator at patriarchal headquarters
in Moscow and shares his moderate views. But it was highly
significant that the delegates bypassed Filaret, a hard-liner
who had served as acting head of the church since the death
last month of Patriarch Pimen. Leader of the Kiev diocese since
1966, Filaret is more of a Ukrainian chauvinist than is
Vladimir and, according to dissident priest Gleb Yakunin, is
seen as "a KGB puppet." He was third in the bishops' vote.

    Aleksy, like all bishops who emerged during the
Khrushchev-Brezhnev period, had to bite his lip and say nothing
about the constant persecution of the church, but he managed
to avoid outright dishonesty. A pre-election article by Aleksy
in a church journal mingled traditional views with support of
Gorbachev's reforms and ecological activism. In a sermon last
month at the Valaam monastery, Aleksy eloquently lamented
communism's mass murder of clergy and destruction of churches.

    The failure of Filaret to win election came as a relief both
within and outside the Russian Orthodox Church. He displayed
his conservative, stand-fast views before the election in a
newspaper interview, contending that "it's naive to expect
revolutionary changes in the church in comparison to those
which took place after the election of Gorbachev." Moreover,
notes Jane Ellis of England's Keston College, Filaret's
election would have sent "the strongest possible anti-Catholic
signal to the Vatican" just six months after Gorbachev visited
the Pope. The Kiev prelate's hostility to Rome has greatly
complicated the bitter fight in the western Ukraine over
Catholics' seizing churches that Stalin handed to the Orthodox
in 1946.

    The widely traveled Aleksy, in contrast, is a committed
ecumenist who for 22 years served as president of the
Conference of European Churches, a continent-wide Orthodox and
Protestant body. A priest's son who was born in independent
Estonia, he was eleven when the Soviets moved in. In 1961, only
eleven years after entering the priesthood, he became the
bishop of Tallinn, Estonia's capital, and retained that post
after he was named to head the powerful Leningrad see in 1986.

    Aleksy entered the political arena last year when he was one
of three Orthodox prelates appointed to the Soviet Congress of
People's Deputies. One of his first speeches there stated that
"the most beautiful social ideas cannot be achieved by applying
force and ignoring human morals, human conscience, human
intelligence, moral choice and inner freedom." Nonetheless, it
seemed highly unlikely that a Baltic native would be chosen to
lead the church at a time when Russian nationalism is running
high and Estonia is seeking secession from the Soviet Union.

    Aleksy takes the helm at a time of religious toleration,
increasing Orthodox church attendance and renovation of
thousands of exquisite onion-domed churches. Full guarantees
of the church's right to religious education and charitable
activity, however, depend upon parliament's passage of the
religious-freedom bill, a draft of which was published last
week. Partly because Patriarch Pimen had been in failing health
for years, the church's top leadership was slow to respond to
the new opportunities under Gorbachev. "Perestroika has not yet
begun in the church. But the moment has come," says the Rev.
Paul Crow, ecumenical chief of America's Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ).  "The window of opportunity for the
church is right now."

    "It is difficult to imagine the volume of work awaiting the
new Patriarch," observes Archbishop Kirill, chairman of Russian
Orthodoxy's ecumenical department and, at 44, a probable future
candidate for the top job. He predicts that the new Patriarch's
rule will be "very difficult," similar to that of Patriarch
Tikhon after the 1917 Revolution. The Russian people are
looking to the church for answers, says Kirill, but "they
forget that the church has been tremendously weakened. The
church must have time to be renewed, and the people do not want
to wait. There is no time." Among the church's most pressing
needs, he cites reconciliation among factions, democratic
reorganization of Orthodoxy, restoration of normal activities
in local parishes and the upgrading of priestly training.

    The urgency of the situation was underscored by the decision
to hold the patriarchal election a mere five weeks after Pimen
died. While last week's electors voted against a leader too
strongly identified with the past, they chose not a declared
reformer but a seasoned administrative insider who seems
capable of riding the rough political rapids of the coming
years. As part of Patriarch Pimen's inner circle, Aleksy long
lived in an atmosphere of caution and compromise. He will now
need to surmount the habits of a lifetime to exert the bold
leadership that the times require.