TASS-DOSIER. On February 12, 2016, Havana will host the first ever meeting of the heads of the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches - Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis. The TASS-DOSIER editors have prepared a certificate containing basic information about the history and structure of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Russian Orthodox Church The Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP) is the largest of the currently existing autocephalous (independent) local Orthodox churches. In the official list of the historical seniority of local churches (diptych), it ranks fifth out of 15.
Story
In 988 Rus' was baptized. Initially, the head of the Russian church was appointed from the Greek clergy of Byzantium, in 1051 Hilarion became the first Russian Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Rus'. In 1448, the Local Council of the Russian Church decided on its autocephaly (self-government) and independently elected Metropolitan Jonah of Moscow and All Rus'. In 1589, the first patriarch was elected, which became Job, after which the independence of the Russian church was recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In 1666, the Russian Church experienced a split as a result of the reforms of Patriarch Nikon.
Under Emperor Peter I, the Orthodox Church in Russia was subordinated to the state, the patriarchate was liquidated. From 1721 to 1917 the church was headed by the Holy Governing Synod. Its members were appointed by the emperor, the Synod was run by state officials - chief prosecutors.
During the Local Council of the Orthodox Church, which took place in 1917-1918, the patriarchate was restored. The first patriarch in the twentieth century. was Tikhon (Belavin; 1865-1925).
After the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks who came to power began to fight against religion. On February 2 (January 20, old style), 1918, the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR "On the separation of the church from the state and the school from the church" came into force, according to which the Russian church was deprived of the rights of a legal entity, land and property. Between 1917 and 1939, most churches and monasteries were forcibly closed, most of clergy - repressed. After the death of Patriarch Tikhon, the election of a new head of the church was forbidden by the authorities.
In 1914, there were more than 55,000 churches in the Russian Orthodox Church; as of 1915, 168 bishops and more than 66,000 clergy served in them. By 1939, there were four bishops, about 300 priests, and the same number of churches.
In the 1920s the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) was created, uniting Russian Orthodox emigrants who found themselves in exile as a result of the 1917 revolution and the Civil War (1917-1922). During the Great Patriotic War, the state softened its anti-religious policy. In 1943, with the permission of the Soviet government, a Council of Bishops was held, at which a new Patriarch Sergius (Stragorodsky) was elected. At the same time, the modern name was officially fixed - the Russian Orthodox Church.
The liberalization of policy towards the Orthodox Church in the USSR began during preparations for the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus' in 1988. On May 30, 1991, on the basis of the law "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations", the church received the official status of a religious organization and the rights of a legal entity . In May 2007, the ROC reunited with ROCOR.
Device
The ROC is registered as a legal entity in the Russian Federation as a centralized religious organization.
It carries out its activities on the basis of the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition, the canons and canons of the holy apostles, holy ecumenical councils and holy fathers, the resolutions of its local and bishops' councils, the Holy Synod and decrees of the patriarch, as well as the charter of the Russian Orthodox Church (the last amendments were made in 2016). ).
The highest bodies of church power and administration are the Local and Bishops' Councils, the Holy Synod headed by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. Since 2009, Kirill (Gundyaev) has been patriarch. Since 2011, the Supreme Church Council has also been acting under his chairmanship.
The church has 22 synodal institutions in the main areas of activity, including the Department for External Church Relations, the Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints, the Synodal Department for Monasteries and Monasticism, etc. The ROC also has a general church court (there are also courts of local jurisdictions), which are intended to maintain the order of church life and are called upon to promote the observance of sacred canons and other church institutions. In particular, the courts can decide on defrocking, excommunication.
The Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate includes seven autonomous or self-governing churches: the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (established in 1920), Chinese (1956), Japanese (1970), Ukrainian Orthodox Church (1990; Moscow Patriarchate), Latvian Orthodox Church (1992), Orthodox Church of Moldova (1992), Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (became part of the Russian Orthodox Church as a result of the unification of churches in 2007).
In addition, the ROC includes the Belarusian Exarchate (an ecclesiastical region that lies outside the country in which the patriarchate is located) and two metropolitan districts (in the Republic of Kazakhstan and Central Asia), 57 metropolias, 296 dioceses.
The ROC has 21 scientific and educational institution, including the Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary, St. Tikhon Orthodox University for the Humanities, the Church-Scientific Center "Orthodox Encyclopedia", etc.
Statistics, monasteries and temples
"1.4 thousand divine services and 57 new metropolises: seven years of service of Patriarch Kirill"
The Russian Orthodox Church has 34,764 churches or other premises for worship; The clergy includes 354 bishops, 35,171 priests, 4,816 deacons, 455 male and 471 female monasteries, including 56 in foreign countries. The ROC does not provide data on the number of parishioners and believers, and there are no official statistics on the religious composition of the population in Russia.
The spiritual and administrative center of the Russian Orthodox Church is the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. It houses the residence of the patriarch, meetings of the Holy Synod are held.
Worship language and calendar
The main language of worship is Church Slavonic, in Moldova - Moldavian (Romanian), in Japan - Japanese, in China - Chinese, in a number of parishes other languages of the peoples of the former USSR; in the diaspora abroad also English, Spanish, French, etc.
The ROC uses the Julian calendar.
mass media
Directly subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchy are the Pravoslavnoye obrazovanie news agency, the Orthodox Spas TV channel, the Soyuz television company, and a number of printed publications (the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, the newspaper Tserkovny Vestnik, etc.).
Awards
The system of awards of the Russian Orthodox Church includes hierarchical (promotion in rank, liturgical) and general church. The latter include various orders and medals, patriarchal signs and letters. The highest order is the Order of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called with a diamond star, the second in seniority is the Order of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Grand Duke Vladimir.
Viktor Eremeev, Big City,
How the ROC is organized
Patriarch
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church bears the title "His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'" (but from the point of view of Christian theology, the head of the church is Christ, and the patriarch is the primate). His name is commemorated during the main Orthodox service, liturgy, in all churches of the Russian Orthodox Church. The patriarch is de jure accountable to the Local and Bishops' Councils: he is the "first among equals" of bishops and governs only the Moscow diocese. De facto, church power is very highly centralized.
The Russian Church was not always headed by a patriarch: he was absent from the baptism of Rus' in 988 until 1589 (ruled by the metropolitans of Kiev and Moscow), from 1721 to 1917 (ruled by the "Department of the Orthodox Confession" - the Synod headed by the Chief Procurator) and from 1925 to 1943.
Synod
The Holy Synod deals with personnel issues, including the election of new bishops and their transfer from diocese to diocese, as well as the approval of the composition of the so-called patriarchal commissions involved in the canonization of saints, monastic affairs, and so on. It is on behalf of the Synod that the main church reform of Patriarch Kirill is carried out - the disaggregation of the dioceses: the dioceses are divided into smaller ones - it is believed that this way they are easier to manage, and the bishops become closer to the people and to the clergy.
The synod convenes several times a year and consists of a dozen and a half metropolitans and bishops. Two of them - Metropolitan Varsonofy of Saransk and Mordovia and the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk - are considered the most influential people in the patriarchy. The head of the Synod is the patriarch.
local cathedral
Collegial supreme body church management. It represents all sections of the church people - delegates from the episcopate, white clergy, monks of both sexes and laity. A local council is called to distinguish it from an ecumenical one, at which delegates from all sixteen Orthodox churches of the world should gather to resolve general Orthodox issues (however, an ecumenical council has not been held since the 14th century). It was believed (and was enshrined in the charter of the church) that it was the local councils that held the highest power in the Russian Orthodox Church, in fact, over the past century, the council was convened only for the election of a new patriarch. This practice was finally legalized in the new edition of the charter of the Russian Orthodox Church, adopted in February 2013.
The difference is not just formal: the idea of the Local Council is that people of different ranks enter the church; although they are not equal to each other, they become a church only together. This idea is usually called catholicity, emphasizing that this is the nature of the Orthodox Church, in contrast to the Catholic one with its rigid hierarchy. Today this idea is less and less popular in the ROC.
Bishops' Cathedral
Congress of all bishops of the Russian Church, which takes place at least once every four years. It is the Bishops' Council that decides all the main church issues. During the three years of Kirill's patriarchate, the number of bishops increased by about a third - today there are about 300 of them. The work of the council begins with the report of the patriarch - this is always the most complete (including statistical) information about the state of affairs in the church. At the meetings, except for the bishops and a narrow circle of employees of the patriarchate, no one is present.
Inter-Council Presence
A new advisory body, the creation of which has become one of the symbols of the reforms of Patriarch Kirill. As planned, it is extremely democratic: it includes experts from various areas of church life - bishops, priests and laity. There are even some women. It consists of a presidium and 13 thematic commissions. In the Inter-Council Presence, draft documents are prepared, which are then discussed in the public domain (including in a special community in LiveJournal).
During the four years of work, the loudest discussions flared up around documents on the Church Slavonic and Russian languages of worship and the provision on monasticism, which encroached on the organization of the life of monastic communities.
Supreme Church Council
A new, rather mysterious body of church administration was created in 2011 during the reforms of Patriarch Kirill. This is a kind of church cabinet of ministers: it includes all the heads of synodal departments, committees and commissions, and the patriarch heads the All-Russian Central Council. The only body of higher church administration (except for the Local Council), in which the laity take part. No one is allowed to the meetings of the All-Russian Central Council, except for the members of the council, its decisions are never published and are strictly classified, you can learn at least something about the All-Union Church Council only from the official news on the website of the Patriarchate. The only public decision of the ACC was a statement after the announcement of the verdict by Pussy Riot, in which the church distanced itself from the court's decision.
The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest autocephalous church in the world. Its history dates back to apostolic times. The Russian Church survived the schism, the fall of the monarchy, the years of rebellion, war and persecution, the fall of the USSR and the formation of a new canonical territory. We have collected abstracts that will help you to better know the history of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Russian Orthodox Church: history
- The history of the Russian Orthodox Church dates back to apostolic times. When the disciples of Christ left to carry the Word of God to people, the territory of the future Rus' turned out to be the path of the Apostle Andrew. There is a legend that the Apostle Andrew came to the Crimean land. The people who lived there were pagans and worshiped idols. The Apostle Andrew preached Christ to them.
- Nevertheless, from the time when the apostle walked through the territory of the future Rus' until the Baptism of Rus', nine centuries passed. Many consider the beginning of the history of the Russian Church to be apostolic times, for others, the Baptism of Rus' in 988 becomes the “starting point”, and still others believe that the Russian Orthodox Church was born in the 4th century. In 1448, the first Autocephalous church organization appeared, its center was located in Moscow. Then the Russian bishops for the first time elected Metropolitan Jonah as the Primate of the Church without the participation of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
- In 1589-1593 Autocephaly was formally recognized and the Church gained independence. Initially, under the Patriarch there was no functioning Council of Bishops - the Holy Synod, which distinguished the Russian Orthodox Church from other Churches.
- The Russian Orthodox Church also survived the difficult pages of its own history. Namely, the church reform, when the term "Old Believers" appeared.
- During the time of Peter I government agency The Holy Synod became the function of general church administration. Due to the innovations of the king, the clergy became a rather closed society, and the Church lost its financial independence.
- But the most difficult times for the Russian Orthodox Church came during the years of theomachism after the fall of the monarchy. By 1939 the Church was practically destroyed. Many clergy were convicted or killed. Persecution did not allow believers to openly pray and visit temples, and the temples themselves were desecrated or destroyed.
- After the collapse of the USSR, when the repression of the Church and the clergy ceased, the “canonical territory” of the Russian Orthodox Church became a problem, as many former republics seceded. Thanks to the act of canonical communion, the local Churches remained "an integral self-governing part of the Local Russian Orthodox Church."
- In October 2011, the Holy Synod approved the reform of the diocesan structure with a three-tier system of government - Patriarchate - Metropolis - Diocese.
Russian Orthodox Church: structure and management
The order of the Church hierarchy in the modern Russian Orthodox Church looks like this:
- Patriarch
- Metropolitan
- Bishop
- Priest
- Deacon
Patriarch
Patriarch Kirill has been the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church since 2009.
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' was elected to the Primate service at the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church on January 27-28, 2009.
Structure of the Russian Orthodox Church (metropolises, dioceses)
There are more than three hundred dioceses in the Russian Orthodox Church, which are united in metropolises. Initially, in the Russian Orthodox Church, the title of metropolitan was assigned only to the Primate. Metropolitans are now deciding critical issues in the Russian Orthodox Church, but its head is still the Patriarch.
List of Metropolitans of the Russian Orthodox Church:
Altai Metropolis
Archangel Metropolis
Astrakhan Metropolis
Bashkortostan Metropolis
Belgorod Metropolis
Bryansk Metropolis
Buryat Metropolis
Metropolis of Vladimir
Volgograd Metropolis
Vologda Metropolis
Voronezh Metropolis
Vyatka Metropolis
Don Metropolis
Yekaterinburg Metropolis
Transbaikal Metropolis
Ivanovo Metropolis
Irkutsk Metropolis
Kaliningrad Metropolis
Kaluga Metropolis
Karelian Metropolis
Kostroma Metropolis
Krasnoyarsk Metropolis
Kuban Metropolis
Kuzbass Metropolis
Kurgan Metropolis
Metropolis of Kursk
Lipetsk Metropolis
Mari Metropolis
Minsk Metropolis (Belarusian Exarchate)
Mordovian Metropolis
Murmansk Metropolis
Metropolis of Nizhny Novgorod
Metropolis of Novgorod
Novosibirsk Metropolis
Omsk Metropolis
Orenburg Metropolis
Oryol Metropolis
Metropolis of Penza
Perm Metropolis
Amur Metropolis
Maritime Metropolis
Pskov Metropolis
Ryazan Metropolis
Samara Metropolis
St. Petersburg Metropolis
Saratov Metropolis
Simbirsk Metropolis
Smolensk Metropolis
Stavropol Metropolis
Tambov Metropolis
Tatarstan Metropolis
Metropolis of Tver
Metropolis of Tobolsk
Tomsk Metropolis
Tula Metropolis
Udmurt Metropolis
Khanty-Mansiysk Metropolis
Chelyabinsk Metropolis
Chuvash Metropolis
Yaroslavl Metropolis
If you open the website of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2018 and look at the members of the Holy Synod, of which there are more than 400, you will notice that exclusively black monks are at the helm of the church. It is not easy to meet a parish priest in the Synod, because they only carry out the decisions made by the monks.
A more careful analysis leads to another discovery: less than a quarter of the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2018 have a higher secular education. On the contrary, about half in their youth advanced from the posts of subdeacons under the then acting bishops. But the fact that most of the members of the Synod have roots in Bessarabia and in the south-east of Ukraine, in Donetsk and Luhansk, is almost impossible to calculate. Although this is the holy truth and the root of all the modern troubles of Russian Orthodoxy, the author of the Lenta.ru investigation claimed in 2018.
It is in the southeast of Ukraine and the east of Moldova that the Russian Orthodox Church has traditionally held the most patriarchal views. It was here that hundreds of Orthodox committed suicide even in tsarist times. This is where the hatred for the TIN and any passport comes from. It was here that cheerful fellow villagers most often disappeared. It was here that the "Black Hundred" was born. It is from here that Father Peter Kucher and many other princes of the Russian Orthodox Church come from.
Metropolises and dioceses
As of July 2018, there are 79 metropolias and 356 dioceses in the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church, including:
Influence groups
Assets
parishes
As of July 2018, almost 40 thousand presbyters, more than 5 thousand deacons and almost 400 bishops serve in the church.
In 1991, when the USSR collapsed and a religious revival began, there were about 6.5 thousand parishes in the ROC, two-thirds of them in Ukraine. As of August 2018, there are more than 36,000 parishes in the Russian Orthodox Church, of which about 25,000 are in Russia.
The number of monasteries has exceeded a thousand - there was not such a number before the revolution.
Three new parishes open every day.
In mid-2017, a thousandth monastery was opened in Russia, and as of January 1, 2018, there were 1010 of them. For comparison: before the Khrushchev persecution, there were only 14 monasteries in the USSR (most in the Ukrainian SSR), in the 1980s - four ( Trinity-Sergius and Pskov-Pechersk Lavra, Riga Hermitage (female) and Assumption Monastery in Pyukhtitsa, Estonia).
commercial activity
- Art and Production Enterprise (HPP) Sofrino
- hotel "Danilovskaya"
- management of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, owned by the Government of Moscow
- OJSC "Ritual Orthodox Service" (for 2016)
State support
Financing from the budget
According to RBC estimates, in 2012-2015, the ROC and related structures received at least 14 billion rubles from the budget and state organizations. At the same time, only the version of the budget for 2016 provides for 2.6 billion rubles.
In particular, in 2014-2015, over 1.8 billion rubles were allocated to the organizations of the Russian Orthodox Church. for the creation and development of Russian spiritual and educational centers under the federal program "Strengthening the unity of the Russian nation and the ethno-cultural development of the peoples of Russia."
Another program that supports the church is "Culture of Russia": since 2012, almost 10.8 billion rubles have been allocated under the program for the preservation of religious facilities. In addition, 0.5 billion rubles. in 2012-2015, it was allocated for the restoration of objects of religious significance, said a representative of the Department of Cultural Heritage of Moscow.
Among the major recipients of contracts on the public procurement website is the Orthodox Encyclopedia Church Research Center (founded by the Patriarchy), which publishes a folio of the same name in 40 volumes edited by Patriarch Kirill. Since 2012, public schools and universities have spent about 250 million rubles to purchase this book. And a subsidiary of the Orthodox Encyclopedia, the Orthodox Encyclopedia Foundation, received 56 million rubles in 2013. from the Ministry of Culture - for the shooting of the films "Sergius of Radonezh" and "Snake Bite".
In 2015, the Ministry of Education allocated about 112 million rubles from the budget. Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University.
The Central Clinical Hospital of St. Alexis under the Moscow Patriarchate received 198 million rubles from the Ministry of Health in 2015, and the new budget provides for about 178 million rubles more for the hospital.
The budget for 2016 includes about 1 billion rubles. "Charitable Fund for the Restoration of the Resurrection New Jerusalem Stauropegial Monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church" - the founder of the fund is the monastery itself.
In addition, from 2013 to 2015 Orthodox organizations received 256 million rubles. within the framework of presidential grants. The ROC is not directly related to the recipients of the grants, they are simply "created Orthodox people”, explains Archpriest Chaplin. Although the church does not directly participate in the creation of such organizations, there are no random people there, Sergey Chapnin, the former editor of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, is sure.
According to the same principle, he says, they distribute money in the only Orthodox grant program "Orthodox Initiative" (the funds were allocated by Rosatom, two sources familiar with the program told RBC; the corporation's press service did not answer RBC's question).
The "Orthodox Initiative" has been held since 2005, the total amount of funding over the years of the competition is almost 568 million rubles.
tax incentives
As of August 2018, the ROC, like any religious organization officially registered in Russia, has benefits, but every one of them is key. It is completely exempt from:
That is, in fact, the ROC pays nothing at all to the budget.
The tax code of the Russian Federation clearly stipulates: the exemption is only from religious activities, and all commercial, even carried out by the ROC, is subject to mandatory taxation. Therefore, according to reports, the church does not conduct commercial activities at all. And it's useless to argue with it. True, according to a high-ranking Russian official, in fact, they simply do not want to get involved with the church.
| “Priests are now included in absolutely all elected bodies of all levels of government, from local parliaments to various kinds of public councils and supervisory commissions - up to ministerial and federal ones. This, of course, is correct, but it opens the door for them to leaders of any rank, where they can simply cry, to withdraw the commission or turn a blind eye to the identified shortcomings. And believe me - the clergy take advantage of this. Moreover, on the direct instructions of his leadership,” he explains. |
As paradoxical as it may sound, but governmental support makes the entire economy of the ROC black. Or gray - after all, not a single parish is accountable to anyone. Nobody checks them, except the Church itself.
Real estate transfer
An equally strange story happened to a woman who worked for many years as an agent for an employee of the apartment fraud department and revealed the schemes of several gangs of “black realtors”. She was introduced into a group suspected of legalizing the apartments of old women who allegedly sold their homes and went to the monastery. Suddenly, she cut off all contact with the officer in charge of her and curtailed the operation on her own, and then sent her daughter to church school, changed her style of dress and began to go to church regularly.
Experienced criminals know that they will always find shelter in the monastery - the Russian Orthodox Church categorically refuses to give law enforcement agencies any information about those who have taken refuge behind the church wall. In the summer of 2017, a certificate from the Ministry of Internal Affairs with a complaint against the abbots of temples hindering the investigation was leaked to the press. The answer to it from Archpriest Sergius also got into free access. He reports that the church sees no reason to provide passport data for persons in the dioceses.
Father Sergiy himself, Sergei Privalov, a native of Bryansk, served in the armed forces of the USSR and the Russian Federation until 2001. Having retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he changed his green field uniform to the black church, and over the next 11 years he made a dizzying career: he became an archpriest, a cleric of the temple Holy Mother of God in Petrovsky Park, a candidate of theology, a member of the Supreme Synodal Council, and also the chairman of the synodal commission for interaction with the armed forces and law enforcement agencies. In other words, he is the highest official of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose decision practically cannot be reversed.
So it is not surprising that it is Archpriest Sergius who regularly refuses law enforcement officers to take fingerprints from monastic employees and confiscate their genetic material.
Persecution of fugitives from the monasteries
As you know, one of the most terrible church sins is an escape from a monastery. According to the charter, it is impossible to leave the monastery just like that - you need to take off your vow, that is, become a deprivation. And this procedure is not quick, so it's easier to escape - the secular authorities still do not consider this an offense. As of July 2018, there are between 300 and 400 men and women who have escaped from monasteries in the Russian Federation. The police formally do not accept such statements - escaping from the monastery is not considered a criminal act, but such people need to be sought and punished so that others are discouraged. This is done by security officers of the ROC. True, officially such an organization does not exist. In the structure of the Church there was only one private security company "Sofrino", but in June 2017 it stopped working and handed over all weapons to the licensing system of the Russian Guard.
Previously, the ROC was among the founders of Peresvet Bank. It is there that for 2018 one of the most serious security services in Russia works. In October 2017, it was headed by Oleg Feoktistov, a former FSB general, the author of an operational combination that ended in a prison term for Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukaev. Peresvet security officers were seen in at least two crime scenes associated with the Russian Orthodox Church, and at one of them, as a police operative later wrote in an explanatory note, they were engaged in “fixing trace objects using forensic technology.” That explanatory note was never given a go, and the crime itself remained unsolved. We are talking about the murder of a priest on the threshold of the Nikolsky Monastery in Pereslavl-Zalessky. The same monastery, the rector of which is Archimandrite Dimitri, the confessor of Mother Lyudmila from the ill-fated village of Moseytsevo.
The security service of the Russian Orthodox Church is also actively conducting operational-search work - that is, it is secretly collecting information about people, including using technical means. For example, it establishes the phone numbers from which the girls from Moseytsevo accessed the Internet. After all, few people know how, having seen a profile on VKontakte, quickly find out from which phone number a person was online and calculate his whereabouts. Someone from the environment of the Moseytsev mothers did this in a matter of seconds. And a certain Matrona Yaroslavskaya already a few minutes after discovering the girls' profiles knew not only their mobile numbers, but also the address of the newly created e-mail. At the same time, the identity of Matrona herself could not be established.
The same fate befell several journalists writing on near-church topics: they suddenly found out that the content of their personal letters was becoming known to the highest church hierarchs. In other words, the security service of the Russian Orthodox Church does not formally exist, but in fact it is actively working. In any case, in December 2017, after the verdict was passed on the mothers from Moseytsevo, someone wanted to find out the fate of their adopted children. By that time, they had changed absolutely all the documents, but in the registry office Yaroslavl region tried to get a list of issued birth certificates, and the directorate of the orphanage received a request, ostensibly from a legal bureau, demanding to provide the girls' personal files. And someone else searched for and opened their electronic mailboxes, and did it very professionally.
One can argue for a long time whether there is a special unit of hacker monks inside the Russian Orthodox Church, but dozens of priests, with whom the author of the Lenta.ru investigation spoke in 2018, said one thing: the metropolitans literally knew the content of their email and correspondence in closed groups social networks. And, despite the motto “the Internet is sinful,” church followers actively use the World Wide Web. Especially when someone needs to be found.
There were many rumors that the princes of the Russian Orthodox Church had the titles of the KGB of the USSR and party cards. It is impossible to assert this - many priests in the 1980s were very oppositional and even opportunistic. But it cannot be considered an absolute lie either. In any case, in 2015, special religious departments operated in the structures of the territorial departments of the FSB, which essentially performed the role of arbitrators, especially at a time when conflicts were gaining resonance. In Moseytsevo, for example, it was the FSB officers who assured the criminal investigation operatives that no one would interfere with the investigation of the criminal case, but there was no need to dig aside. In Bogolyubovo, officers from the relevant FSB units also smoothed out sharp corners. At the same time, it is the FSB in Moscow that prevents the adoption of changes to laws that would make the budget of religious organizations transparent.
The Western press often talks about the fact that money for bribes to officials and payment for intelligence information, especially political, comes to various countries through church channels. But in our country, these data, even in translated articles, do not appear. And not because someone formally forbids - there is internal censorship. In rare cases - the authority of the editor. It is no secret that Orthodox parishes often provide assistance to compatriots.
Lack of labor legislation
In 2017, the educational commission of the Moscow Patriarchate came to the Vladimir Theological Seminary for an inspection, and found out almost by chance that out of a dozen authoritative professors, only two were formally employed - the rector and the first vice-rector. And the rest worked for many years without registration, work books and deductions to the Pension Fund. They received their salaries in envelopes and thought that this was the way it should be. Having learned the truth, they went to bow to the Patriarchate. And they said: the pension will be paid by those whom you have now trained. In fact, the case was put on the brakes. People quit, but no one will make up for the missed years - neither in the length of service, nor in mandatory deductions. And these teachers have nowhere to go - the ROC has a monopoly on spiritual education.
Russians will be very surprised when they find out that priests have absolutely no rights. Yes, they were forced to issue work books for them, but not everyone still has them - in every church, in every monastery they were issued for the required minimum of clergy. But no one has employment contracts. Even a standard form was not developed.
Priests' salaries
For 2018, the salary of a Russian priest is from 20 to 40 thousand rubles a month. Some say that they withhold personal income tax, some say that they are completely exempt from taxes. The abbot gets much more.
Moreover, in the conditions of the hierarchy, questions of prestige are manifested especially clearly. Therefore, an ordinary priest will never buy a car more prestigious than the rector; the rector will not appear in public wearing watches more expensive than those of the bishop; and the bishop will not have a rarity that the patriarch does not have. Therefore, the desire to stand out manifests itself in a different way.
In June 2018, one of the recruitment agencies was looking for a personal chef for the abbess of the holy monastery. The salary was promised at 90 thousand rubles. According to the agency staff, the abbess was going to pay her personal money.
Workers' and Peasants' Army
In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, the fundamental problem of the ROC arose: there was essentially no one to revive religion and its institutions. After all, all the churchmen were exterminated as a class.
| “The growth rate of the Russian Orthodox Church is colossal,” Father Nikolai said in July 2018, in the world - Nikolai Dmitrievich Gundyaev (namesake), a former priest who left the Church after criticizing the structure of the church. In the early 1990s, during the period of reconstruction of the Russian Orthodox Church, tragic utopianism was superimposed on bookish Orthodoxy: the world is going to hell, it will not last long, ahead of the third World War, we need to save ourselves - and a lot of destitute people from broken families poured into monasteries in search of, if not a better life, then with the idea of where to save their children from debauchery, from alcohol, from drugs, from prostitution. Then the monasteries were still such utopian communities of Tommaso Campanella (the author of the "City of the Sun", according to V. I. Lenin, one of the predecessors of scientific socialism) and represented not so much Orthodoxy as war communism. People all left the Soviet Union, having before their eyes the collective farm as a model. Here it is, and not the apostolic community, and built. Therefore, not God's houses were obtained, but the same collective farms, only with the Gospel in their hands. People from Bessarabia and from the south-east of Ukraine were especially valued. And it turned out by itself that out of all possible Orthodoxy we began to build a peasant one. Again, with all the ensuing consequences - with the promotion of subsistence farming and peasant culture, as well as the rejection of urban life. Why do peasants need passports? "Taxpayer Identification Number" (TIN)? Books? Cards? Overseas travel? Peasants have always lived off subsistence farming! Well, that is, such peasant practicality. It was then that the roots of the current troubles of the Russian Orthodox Church were laid - it so happened that the monastic, black clergy in Russia are traditionally the least educated than the white clergy. This is our specificity, unlike, for example, the Catholics: their monks are more educated than parish priests. Since then, since the revival of the Church, people who have taken monastic vows have been making a frenzied career. Lightning. Where a white priest needs to plow and plow, serve and serve, blacks could decorate themselves with everything they can in two years and take positions that an ordinary priest could not even dream of. Accordingly, from rags to riches, without education - without the corresponding length of service - forward. These are again Stalinist falcons, non-commissioned officers who became generals of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, who studied on the principle of "takeoff - landing - ready to fight." . |
At the end of the period of stagnation, the profile of the average head of the district level looked like this: eight classes of education, technical school, service in the ranks of the armed forces of the USSR, proletarian (or collective farm) specialty, University
Serf prisoners
In 2018, a banished pop living in the Baikal region easily explained the everyday tricks of the lower echelon of Russian Orthodoxy.
| - If you want to recover - go for the Ural-stone. They take everyone there - the last bandits and convicts. The more serious the crime, the further east you have to go. It's very hard here, but they count three days. I personally know a dozen completely officially ordained elders, each of whom is a convict and a murderer, on their conscience not one or two, but ten to twenty victims, including those added already in the ministry. There is REAL serfdom here, because you can’t leave here. They do not pay money, but they ask for work. |
Beyond the Ural Mountains, even officials and the leadership of law enforcement agencies openly talk about serfdom in the monasteries and sketes of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2018. This is a problem that needs to be solved, but no one knows how to solve it. Although there are many advisers. Already in December 2017, one Siberian journalist, having learned the story about Moseytsevo, looked into the narrator’s eyes for a long time and incomprehensibly, and then said: “You don’t know life there in Europe at all.” We don't make noise about such nonsense. The law is taiga. Seek fistula.
According to him, dozens of people, mostly released prisoners, are missing. They find themselves in distant places where they work for free for the benefit of the church.
He clarified that law enforcement officers often cover these so-called Orthodox sketes. But they cover - the word is not very accurate: they don’t take money for harboring. Something else is more curious: since the 1990s, those released from places of deprivation of liberty began to actively settle in the monasteries of Central Russia, and later in the Russian south. For them, there is even a term - “winter monks”, that is, those who take tonsure for the winter in order to sit out the fierce times in warmth and satiety. In fact, according to law enforcement officers, a unique symbiosis has arisen: the bearers of the criminal culture ensure order in the monasteries using the Zon methods, which guarantees an influx of material wealth, and the church gives them protection from law enforcement agencies and the flock.
Education system
2018
In 2018, the Educational Committee of the Russian Orthodox Church was headed by the ambitious Moscow archpriest Maxim Kozlov, the former rector of the church of St. Tatiana at Moscow State University. During the year he inspected almost all the theological schools of the Russian Orthodox Church and even suspended the work of the most hopeless ones.
However, he had to admit that the Sretensky Theological Seminary of Metropolitan Tikhon has the best indicators in the system: over the 20 years of its existence, it has produced 550 seminarians, of which 70% have become clergy, and the rest work in various synodal structures.
1994-2018
From 1994 to 2018, the Patriarchy's Educational Committee was headed by Archbishop Evgeny (Reshetnikov). After several attempts at reform, stagnation reigned in the economy under his jurisdiction.
Numerous provincial seminaries that opened in the wake of the “religious revival” of the 1990s could not find applicants and funds to feed students. But even the country's leading theological schools - the Moscow and St. Petersburg academies - were disastrously losing graduates who did not want to serve in the church line. It was necessary to introduce something like partial serfdom - when graduates of academies and seminaries sign legally significant obligations to work in the church for at least three years after receiving a diploma or to cover astronomical amounts of tuition and maintenance at their own expense. Under Eugene, the theological schools of the Russian Orthodox Church switched to the Bologna system, which implies a two-level structure higher education: the seminary course was equated to a bachelor's degree, and the academic course was equated to a master's degree.
It was decided to hold the first meeting of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' with the Pope in Cuba at the José Marti International Airport. This was due to the fact that from the very beginning, Patriarch Kirill did not want it to take place in Europe, since it was there that the centuries-old difficult history of divisions and conflicts between Christians unfolded.
The main topic of the talks in Cuba was the discussion of acute social, political and moral problems of our time. The final document, which was signed by the Patriarch and the Pope, in particular, spoke of the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The hierarchs called on the international community "to take immediate action to prevent further expulsion of Christians from the Middle East." In addition, they made an appeal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. One of the principal points of the document is the recognition by the Pope of Rome that the union is not a means of restoring church unity. The document also spoke about the protection family values and about the rapprochement of the Orthodox and Catholic positions on the issue of proselytism: the parties called for it to be abandoned, since it "has practical significance for peaceful coexistence." At the same time, both churches emphasize that neither theological nor canonical issues were discussed at the meeting. This suggests that it was organized not to resolve dogmatic differences, but to draw the attention of the world community to existing problems - in particular, to armed conflicts, persecution of Christians and the decline of moral values in the world. The Patriarch and the Pope demonstrated to the world that, despite dogmatic differences, Christians are ready to jointly defend common Christian values in an increasingly secular world.
1980s: 4 thousand out of 6.5 thousand parishes in Ukraine
In the late 1980s, when the church revival began in the USSR, officially called the “return to the faith,” there were 6.5 thousand parishes in the Russian Orthodox Church. Of these, almost 4,000 are in Ukraine, with the majority in its southeastern part. About 500 more in Moldova - more precisely, in that part of it that was traditionally called the Bessarabia province, or Bessarabia. Then in the USSR there were three seminaries - Zagorsk, Leningrad and Odessa, and two Theological Academies - Moscow and Leningrad. The state policy was such that most of their applicants already had an incomplete higher secular education.
Every denomination in the world has a leader, for example, the head of the Orthodox Church is Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus'.
But besides it, the church has another leadership structure.
Who is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church
Patriarch Kirill is the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill
He leads the church life of the country, as well as the Patriarch - the head of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and several other monasteries.
What is the hierarchy of the ROC among the clergy
In fact, the church has quite complex structure and hierarchy. Each priest fulfills his role and takes his assigned place in this system.
The scheme of the Orthodox Church has three levels, which were created at the very beginning of the birth of the Christian religion. All servants are divided into the following categories:
- Deacons.
- Priests.
- Bishops.
In addition, they are divided into "black" and "white" clergy. The "black" refers to the monks, and to the "white" lay clergy.
Structure of the ROC - scheme and description
Due to some complexity of the church structure, it is worth considering in more detail, for a deep understanding of the algorithms of the work of priests.
Ranks of bishops
These include:
- Patriarch: lifelong main title of the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on this moment in Rus' it is Cyril.
- Vicar: right hand bishop, his deputy, but he does not have his own diocese and cannot govern the diocese of a bishop.
- Metropolitan: a vicegerent in charge of metropolises, including those outside the Russian Federation.
- Archbishop: The title of senior bishop is considered an honorary title.
- Bishop: The third level of priesthood in the Orthodox hierarchy, often holds the title of bishop, governs a diocese and is appointed by the Holy Synod.
Ranks of priests
Priests are divided into "black" and "white".
Consider the "black" clergy:
- Hieromonk: a monk-clergyman, it is customary to address him with the words: “Your Reverend”.
- Hegumen: head (abbot) of the monastery. Until 2011 in Russia, this title was honorary and did not necessarily correspond to the post of head of any monastery.
- Archimandrite: the highest title for a clergyman who has taken monastic vows. Often he is the rector of large monastic cloisters.
The "white" ranks include:
- Protopresbyter: the highest rank of the Russian Orthodox Church in its "white" part. It is given as a reward for special service in some cases and only at the request of the Holy Synod.
- Archpriest: senior priest, the wording may also be used: senior priest. Most often, the archpriest leads a church. You can get such a position not earlier than five years of faithful service after receiving a pectoral cross and not earlier than ten years after ordination.
- Priest: junior clergy rank. The priest may be married. It is customary to address such a person like this: “Father” or “Father, ...”, where after the father comes the name of the priest.
Ranks of deacons
This is followed by the step of deacons, they are also divided into "black" and "white" clergy.
List of "Black" clergy:
- Archdeacon: senior rank among deacons in a monastic community. It is given for special merits and length of service.
- Hierodeacon: priest-monk of any monastery. You can become a hierodeacon after the sacrament of consecration and tonsure as a monk.
"White":
- Protodeacon: the main diocesan deacon, it is customary to address him, like the archdeacon, with the words: “Your high gospel.”
- Deacon: a priest who stands at the very beginning of the hierarchy of the ROC. These are assistants for the rest, higher ranks of the clergy.
Conclusion
The ROC has at the same time a complex but logical organization. The main rule should be understood: its structure is such that it is impossible to get from the “white” clergy to the “black” without monastic vows, and it is also impossible to occupy many high positions in the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church without being a monk.
