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A few days ago the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexy II, died. I was hoping to read an extended story about his life, as is customary when someone of note passes, in the papers I have been reading for many years. I was only able to find a brief seven line column announcing his death, and even in that brief announcement the paper made sure to insert an implied negative connotation such as “making the (Russian) church a force for nationalism”. The European press has been more respectful and given Patriarch Alexy II his due. He was described...

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II, who presided over a vast post-Soviet revival of faith but struggled against the influence of other churches, died Friday at age 79 Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II, who presided over a vast post-Soviet revival of faith but was criticized for bullying other denominations and making the church a force for nationalism, died Friday, Dec. 5, 2008, at age 79. The Moscow Patriarchate said he died at his residence outside Moscow, but did not give a cause of death. Alexy had long suffered from a heart ailment.

The patriarch died on Friday morning, aged 79, the Church told the BBC.

Patriarch Alexy II Vatican City, Dec 5, 2008 / 11:03 am (CNA).- The Russian Orthodox Church is in mourning today as it copes with the loss of Patriarch Alexy II, who passed away early Friday morning at his residence in Moscow. Pope Benedict has expressed his grief at hearing the news, saying he was “profoundly saddened” to hear of his passing. The official cause of the 79 year-old Patriarch’s death has not been announced, but he has been suffering from a heart condition for some time.Upon learning of the death of the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Pope...

"I am shocked. It is hard to find words. I had immense respect for him". These are the grieving words attributed to Mikhail Gorbachev in a multitude of news reports now streaming out of Russia concerning the death of Patriarch Alexy II, the beloved head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Reportedly interested in the claims of the Christian faith in the last few years, the last President of the Soviet Union and champion of the “Glasnost” strategy which helped consign that former world power to the history books expressed the sentiments of the entire Russian people. Under the leadership of...

I quote from the column, headed "Reflections by Comrade Fidel" and titled "The Russian Orthodox Church," which was "syndicated," if that's the word, on Oct. 21. This church, wrote Castro: [i]s a spiritual force. It played a major role at critical times in the history of Russia. At the onset of the Great Russian War, after the treacherous Nazi attack, Stalin turned to her for support to the workers and peasants that the October Revolution had changed into the owners of factories and the land. .... It gets worse. As Castro writes in the same column, concerning the visit of...

24.10.2008, 10.41 CARACAS, October 24 (Itar-Tass) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez met with Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Kirill on Thursday evening. The Russian church hierarch was leading an authoritative Russian delegation at Russia’s Days in Venezuela that are already over. The interlocutors discussed a wide range of international problems, further development of Venezuelan-Russian relations, broader spiritual and cultural ties between the peoples of the countries. The meeting highlighted the importance of further shaping of a multi-polar world order, the preservation of spiritual and cultural values of the peoples, a role of religion in international relations, Metropolitan Kirill told Itar-Tass...

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's anti-Sovietism was heroic and influential, but its other side became clearer upon the Union's collapse. The death of the literary colossus and anti-Soviet dissident has, quite rightly, been greeted with an outpouring of praise for his principled and brave unmasking of the horrors of the Soviet regime. His literary achievements, closely connected with his dissident activities, have also justifiably received much attention. But there is another side to Solzhenitsyn – one which most obituaries have mentioned only in passing, if at all. Solzhenitsyn's analysis of Soviet communism was based on the notion that the Bolsheviks imposed a totalitarian...

MILLVILLE - It was something she felt was remarkable at the time, as she and the rest of the congregation filed in behind him in the small church and left the general public standing on the lawn waiting for him to emerge again. When Alexander Solzhenitsyn visited Millville and the St. Nicholas Old Russian Orthodox Church in 1976, his message, delivered in Russian to a crowd of between 50 and 70 congregants, was about culture, pride in religion and maintaining the existence of that which was threatened by the Western world. The Nobel Prize-winning author who provided firsthand accounts of...

Russian Orthodox Churches have been holding services to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the murder of their last royal family. Processions were held in Moscow as well as the site of the killings - the city of Yekaterinburg near the Ural Mountains. Officials have re-affirmed that DNA tests on bone and teeth fragments discovered in a shallow grave a year ago belong to two of the children of former Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Crown Prince Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria were killed along with their parents and sisters by Bolsheviks on the morning of July 17 1918, but the whereabouts...

Decries "dominance of an agnostic or even a materialistic approach to life which causes anxiety amongst believers" GENEVA, March 20, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has called for worldwide inter-religious dialogue on human rights and denounced the "dangerous" anti-life and secularist trends in human rights thought. Human rights, a concept brought into Europe by Christianity, has been subverted by a small group of activists and civil servants who have imposed an atheist or agnostic interpretation. Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kallingrad spoke for many Christians outside the Russian Orthodox Church when he told the 7th...

Shortly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, a Russian Orthodox monk nominated Russia as the ‘Third Rome’, or successor to the Roman and Byzantine empires. Some analysts have seen Muscovite Third Romism (that allegedly persisted into the Bolshevik era of the Soviet Union) as the Russian equivalent of the USA’s Manifest Destiny, and other concepts used to rationalise imperialism. This paper attempts to broaden and deepen similar interpretations of the major geopolitical dictum coming from Russian Orthodoxy: questionably a direct justification for Russian imperialist messianism and far from being just a feature of the past, this metaphor is an...

Metropolitan Laurus deceased http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=dujour&div=163 New York, March 16, Interfax – First hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia Metropolitan Laurus of Eastern America and New York Diocese deceased on Sunday at the age of 80, the ROCOR website has reported. Metropolitan Laurus passed away on the Feast of Orthodoxy. He was born Vassily Mikhailovich Skurla on January 1, 1928, in the village of Ladomirova, present day Slovakia. He was ordained to the diaconate in 1950, and became a hieromonk in 1954. Fr. Laurus graduated from the Holy Trinity Theological Seminary in 1954 and was appointed its inspector in...

Russia's Orthodox Church, despite decades of brutal repression under Soviet rule, is putting its trust in the KGB to ensure that a remarkable religious revival does not fade with the departure of President Vladimir Putin. In an unusual move, Alexei II, the Church's patriarch, has endorsed deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev ahead of next week's presidential election. The influence of his support on Russia's estimated 100 million Orthodox worshippers is immense. It also illustrates the unholy alliance the Church has forged with the Kremlin since Mr Putin came to power eight years ago. The president, a proud adherent, has allowed...

The meeting of the Russian Orthodox Church with Pope Benedict XVI was found "very positive". Metropolitan Kirill, the top foreign relations official in the Russian church, held private talks with Benedict at the Vatican. The Vatican gave no details of the talks, but in an interview with Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano, Kirill said the visit left him "with great sentiments of hope." Relations between Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholics in the former Communist land have been particularly tense at times. The Russian Orthodox Church has accused Roman Catholics of improperly seeking converts in traditionally Russian Orthodox areas. The Vatican has rejected the claim,...

MOSCOW: The outgoing leader of Russia's Catholics said Wednesday that the "wall of problems" souring Vatican relations with the Russian Orthodox Church should be overcome so the two faiths could work together to advance the word of Christ. Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz said the Orthodox "could have been better to us," referring to the Catholic community of about 600,000 in a country of 142 million. The Russian Orthodox Church has accused Roman Catholics of improperly seeking converts in traditionally Russian Orthodox areas. The Vatican has rejected the claim, saying it only ministers to the country's Catholics, mostly of Eastern European and...

23 October 2007 Russian Church: Constantinople ruins talks with Catholics Moscow, October 22, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church representative to European institutions accused the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on Monday of seeking to establish itself as the top authority in the world's Orthodox communion and of ruining Orthodox-Roman Catholic dialogue. The representative, Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, was referring to the 10th meeting of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. The delegation of the Moscow Patriarchate withdrew from the meeting, held in Ravenna, Italy, in protest against...

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Explains Stand on Homosexuality to Council of Europe "Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin" By John-Henry Westen STRASBOURG, October 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In his first visit to the Council of Europe on a     mission to discuss inter-religious dialogue, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, gave a spirited defence of Christian morality. He noted that the notion of human rights in Europe stems, at least in part from Christian morality. "Yet today there occurs a break between human rights and morality, and this break threatens the European civilization," he warned. "We can see...

Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the return of religion to public life, localities in Russia are increasingly decreeing that to receive a proper public school education, children should be steeped in the ways of the Russian Orthodox Church, including its traditions, liturgy and historic figures. The lessons are typically introduced at the urging of church leaders, who say that the enforced atheism of Communism left Russians out of touch with a faith that was once at the core of their identity. The new curriculum reflects the nation’s continuing struggle to define what it means...

In the first of a series from southern Russia, the BBC's Steven Eke reports on the Cossacks, who have emerged as an influential political group in the region, strongly supportive of Vladimir Putin and his idea of Russia's "greatness". Village leaders like "Ataman" Viktor Vasilyevich are greatly respected The Cossacks play an increasingly important role in Russia. Their disciplined way of life, patriotism, large families and commitment to work, are seen by many politicians as a model that could help resolve many of Russia's problems. For this, they receive support from the very top. The village of Varennikovskoye is home...