The Shepherd, December 2006
NEWS SECTION, 2
MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE & ECUMENISM
METROPOLITAN KIRILL of Smolensk and Kaliningrad has said that it is important for his Church (MP) to continue its participation in the World Council of Churches (WCC) while warning of the dangers of self-isolation during a radio interview, reports Sophia Kishkovsky from Moscow for Ecumenical News International. He told Radio Mayak, a state-run radio station, on 8th November, that the WCC is the best forum for the Russian Orthodox Church to bear witness and understand the state of contemporary Christianity. “On that platform,” he said, “we have the opportunity to immediately, instantaneously, see what is happening in the Christian world ... to form a clear understanding of where contemporary Christianity is heading, to bear witness to our position and convince others.” “He was responding to a listener’s question during a call-in as part of the broadcast. Many believers and Orthodox organisations in Russia are said to be opposed to the church’s participation in the church unity movement and the issue was one of the stumbling blocks in reunion talks between the Moscow Patriarchate and the ROCA,” Kishkovsky’s report tells us. However another posting, in Russian from Interfaks, informs us that Metropolitan Kirill had stated that the Church Abroad was not against the Russian Church’s participation in the ecumenical movement “as a witness to Orthodoxy.”
BELARUS: BELIEVERS PRESSURED
GERALDINE FAGAN reports via Forum 18 News Service that Belarusian state officials, with local Moscow Patriarchate priests, are pressuring Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA) parishioners to withdraw their signatures from state registration applications. Part of the registration procedure is that at least 20 Belarusian citizens must sign applications and give personal data. If even one signature is withdrawn, the application process has to start again. Officials have apparently given Moscow Patriarchate priests and parishioners in the city of Brest details of the signatories on ROCA parish registration applications. Baptists and Pentecostals have described to Forum 18 similar pressures on their new communities. Under Belarus’ restrictive 2002 Religion Law, which was strongly backed by the Belarusian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), state registration is compulsory for all religious communities, and unregistered religious activity is illegal – against international human rights standards. Moscow Patriarchate priests and parishioners in the western Belarusian city of Brest have recently been visiting the apartments of those who submitted their names for ROCA parish registration and encouraging them to recant. Bishop Agafangel assumed that the ROCA parishioners’ addresses had been passed to the priests from the state organ responsible for registration. Despite having reservations about the present rapprochement process, Bishop Agafangel and his diocese have remained under the jurisdiction of Metropolitan Lavr. Since August 2006, two Moscow Patriarchate priests, Fr Yevgeni Likhota and Fr Ignati Lukovich, have been threatening local residents who submitted their personal details as part of registration applications for two ROCA parishes in the Vulka and Kovaleva suburbs of the city, local ROCApriest Fr Ioann Grudnitsky stated on 23rd October. These priests and their supporters have told his parishioners that the ROCA is “an illegal, uncanonical sect” and that if they continue to associate with it they will not be allowed to attend or receive sacraments from MP churches, Fr Ioann reported. As a result, he said, some members of the ROCA parish of Sts Antoni, Ioann and Yevstafi, Martyrs of Vilna in Kovaleva, have withdrawn their names from its registration application. For his part, Fr Yevgeni Likhota insisted that he knew of no Orthodox in his area other than his own MP community. A secretary at the Moscow Patriarchate's Brest diocese told Forum 18 that its priests could not possibly have met with ROCA parishioners as “there are none - there are no registered ROCA parishes here.”
RAPPROCHEMENT PROCESS
AT THE CHANCERY of the Orthodox Church in America, His Beatitude Metropolitan Herman received representatives of the ROCA on Monday, 20th November, for a conversation about the rapprochement. Also in attendance were His Grace Bishop Nikon of Boston, His Grace Bishop Tikhon of Philadelphia, and Archpriest Leonid Kishkovsky. The ROCA representatives were Archpriest Alexander Lebedeff, Secretary of the Commission on Negotiations with the Moscow Patriarchate and Priest Serafim Gan, personal secretary to His Eminence Metropolitan Lavr. Perhaps the majority of the worldwide ROCA parishes, and some of the largest of them, are in North America, the territory, which by its granting a Tomos of Autocephaly to the OCA, the Moscow Patriarchate has recognised as the canonical territory of its daughter Church.
RUSSIAN CHURCH LINKED WITH INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
FOLLOWING the apparent assassination of former FSB agent, Alexander Litvinenko, in London, there has been widespread speculation about the the activities of the intelligence services of post(?)-Soviet Russia. One of the more sober appraisals of the present situation was authored by Neil Mackay and published by the “Sunday Herald.” He begins his piece with the words: “To dissident Russian intelligence officers now in exile or in hiding around the world and British intelligence operatives, July 9 this year was a seismic date. On that day legislators in the Duma - the Russian state parliament - unanimously approved new laws which allowed Russia's Federal Security Service to hunt down and kill enemies of the state anywhere on the face of the Earth. One British intelligence source said: ‘This marked a blatant return to the bad old days of the cold war when the KGB thought it could act with impunity anywhere it pleased.’” One portion of Mackay report which will be of particular interest to our readers is the following: “One route to the diaspora is through the Russian Orthodox Church in countries such as Britain and America. According to Preobrazhensky [a former lieutenant colonel in Russian intelligence], Russian intelligence has long infiltrated the church and used it as a means to recruit emigré Russians and spy on dissidents and exiles. ‘In the Soviet period, the Kremlin treated Russian refugees as traitors and enemies, but now it is turning them into its fifth column,’ he says. ‘Specifically for this purpose, Putin has founded directorate EM in his Foreign Intelligence Service. Its officers are working in every Western country, concentrating on local Russians.’ Intelligence officers attract Russians overseas by appealing to their patriotism. ‘The communist idea has been replaced with the nationalistic one,’ Preobrazhensky says. The former spy adds that Putin aimed to turn the Orthodox Church abroad ‘into outposts of Russian state interests. Russian intelligence has penetrated the Orthodox Church and is utilising it for spying abroad.’ Preobrazhensky, who plans to write about this phenomenon in his forthcoming book, The KGB And The Russian Diaspora, points out that around a third of Russian Orthodox worshippers outside the borders of Russia are not native Russians but the children and grandchildren of immigrants. This, he says, gives the intelligence service a route to ‘ordinary’ Britons and Americans who have no understanding of Russian life and are more vulnerable to exploitation. ‘Westerners would think it unbelievable that a priest could be a spy - but in Russia is has been going on for almost 100 years,’ he adds. ‘Believe me - Russian Orthodox churches in the UK are infiltrated by Russian intelligence.’ The Sunday Herald contacted one Russian Orthodox church but the clergy there declined to comment on the allegations.”
FR VADIM ZAKREVSKY ELEVATED
OVER THE GUY FAWKES WEEKEND, Archbishop Mark briefly visited the Harvard Road parish in London. He had intended to hold a diocesan meeting on the Saturday, but at the last moment this had to be called off, as he was required to attend a reception at the Moscow Kremlin at the invitation of President Putin. Thus he only arrived in London late on Saturday evening. On the Sunday morning he served at the Dormition Church with Archpriest Thomas Hardy and Fr Vadim Zakrevsky, the parish priest. During the Divine Liturgy, Fr Vadim was raised to the rank of Archpriest (Protoierei) by His Grace. In the afternoon the Archbishop chaired the AGM of the parish at which Vitaly Matafonov was elected churchwarden. He then called a meeting of the newly constituted Parish Council, and later in the day held a meeting with the Church trustees. On Monday morning, the Archbishop paid a brief visit to the Brookwood Brotherhood to inspect the building progress and stayed for coffee, before rushing off to catch his plane at Heathrow. The new Protoierei and his Proto-matushka, Natalia, kindly brought him down to see us. 
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