Official service of the Russian Orthodox Church. Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church: “In Russia they respect human rights” (Público, Portugal). — You observe respect for human rights
The General Assembly of the Archdiocese of Orthodox Parishes of the Russian Tradition in Western Europe has supported plans for reunification with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). This is stated in a statement from the archdiocese, TASS reports. “Voting results: for
Official website of the DPR 6 hours ago 2The Mezyb company, owned by structures of the Russian Orthodox Church, received a license for the production and supply of wine.
The issue of the schedule for the start of services in St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg has not yet been resolved. Currently, the State Museum-Monument (SMM) “St. Isaac’s Cathedral” has two schedules at its disposal - according to the first, signed earlier
Museum workers were surprised by the plans of the Russian Orthodox Church to change the schedule of services in St. Isaac's Cathedral
The management of the state museum-monument "St. Isaac's Cathedral" did not approve the change in the schedule of services, the press service told Interfax on Sunday.
Interfax 13 days ago 0The Russian Orthodox Church asked the authorities of St. Petersburg to use the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael for 100 years
The parish of the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Lomonosov asks the authorities of St. Petersburg to transfer the cathedral of the same name to it for free use, follows from the parish’s appeal published on the website of the city’s property relations committee on Tuesday.
Interfax 18 days ago 0The Russian Orthodox Church demands an objective investigation into the beating of a priest in Yalta
The Russian Orthodox Church demanded an impartial investigation into the circumstances of the attack on Moscow priest Alexei Zabelin in Yalta and the punishment of all those responsible.
Crimea News 23 days ago 25A group of Ukrainian Orthodox activists “Pravblog” (faithful to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate) called on its supporters to brainstorm on the topic of introducing “new management and organizational formats,
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church Council for Church Art called rumors about a criminal case against him a lie
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church Expert Council on Church Art, Architecture and Restoration, Archpriest Leonid Kalinin, categorically denied publications that appeared on the Internet about the initiation of a criminal case against him for an accident committed in 2016.
Interfax 1 month 8 days ago 2Epiphany told the “painful truth” for the Russian Orthodox Church and Russia
Prince Vladimir did not baptize all the territories of Rus'. Metropolitan Epifaniy of the OCU stated this after the religious procession in Kyiv. “We don’t feel competition, because anyone who knows the real, objective, our Ukrainian history understands perfectly where the roots of
sharij.net Ukraine 1 month 10 days ago 60The head of the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, Archpriest Dimitri (Smirnov), called modern Russian men weak. Our men are our national tragedy,” Interfax quotes the priest’s statement, which he made during a conversation with clergy of the Syzran diocese. The archpriest believes that female upbringing is partly to blame for the weakness of Russian men. At the same time, according to Dimitri, a Russian woman is strong in her genetics. He also considers it a mistake of Soviet propaganda that
15:07 06.09.2019
Metropolitan of Transbaikalia: those who will not participate in the election of the head will answer before GodMetropolitan of Chita and Petrovsk-Zabaikalsky Dmitry (in the world Vitaly Eliseev) on the eve of the elections of the head of the Trans-Baikal Territory recorded a video message to voters in which he stated that those people who do not participate in the vote will answer to God. We are approaching an important milestone in the life of our native Transbaikalia. There will be gubernatorial elections on September 8. An important circumstance is our participation or non-participation. And non-participation is something for which we will be responsible before God, among other things, because now we live in a special period of development
16:52 04.09.2019
After the explosions, military warehouses in Achinsk were sprinkled with holy waterIn a military unit near Achinsk in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where ammunition warehouses exploded in August, a local priest held a prayer service and sprinkled holy water on the remaining warehouses, personnel and equipment. This was reported on the website of the Krasnoyarsk diocese. The priest of the Kazan Cathedral in the city of Achinsk, Priest Alexy Alexandrov, visited military unit No. 97646 of the Air Defense Forces of Russia, stationed near the village of Kamenka, Achinsk region. Father Alexy performed a prayer service, drove around the territory of warehouses in an armored car with
16:52 24.08.2019
The abbot from the Sverdlovsk region cursed the Pobeda airline on social networksThe rector of the church in the name of the Sovereign Icon of the Mother of God in Yekaterinburg, Abbot Veniamin (Vitaly Raynikov), cursed Pobeda Airlines, which he wrote about on Facebook. “Victory, company of sadists, damn you,” says his page on the social network. Attached to the recording is a video of a woman begging airline employees to let her board a flight to Cheboksary. Let us add that this is the only post of the abbot on the social network accessible to everyone; it is not clear whether his page is genuine. The diocese has not yet commented on the situation. Brought to Victory
00:30 13.08.2019
A priest of the Russian Orthodox Church and a professor of theology speaks about the rough baptism of a baby in GatchinaIn ancient times, Christians spent their whole lives going to baptism, but today many do not understand the meaning of the sacrament. Priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Dmitry Klimov and professor of theology Alexey Osipov, at the request of the Daily Storm, commented on the scandal that happened in the Marienburg Church of the Intercession in Gatchina. Hegumen Photius rudely baptized a one-year-old child and the parents complained to the diocesan administration. According to the mother, her son almost drowned in the font. The video of the baptism caused a stir on the Internet; many users criticized the priest and the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole. Hegumen Photius was removed
16:24 07.08.2019
The icon from the main temple of the Russian Armed Forces will stay in the Southern Urals for 10 daysAn icon of the main temple of the Russian Armed Forces (the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Patriot Park in Moscow) will be brought to the Chelyabinsk region. The icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands will stay in the region for 10 days, from August 13 to 22, reports the correspondent of the Access News Agency with reference to the press service of the Chelyabinsk diocese. The icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands is a canonical image of the face of Jesus Christ, which, according to legend, was miraculously imprinted on a piece of matter. The face is surrounded by images of the Most Pure Mother of God of Kazan, Vladimir, Smolensk and
18:33 05.08.2019
Russian priest says he spoke to Charles Darwin about evolution and he repentedArchpriest and confessor of the Alekseevsky Stavropegic Convent in Moscow, Artemy Vladimirov, said that he communicated with the scientist Charles Darwin, who lived in the 19th century. According to the priest, this happened in Great Britain in Westminster Abbey, where he is buried. A representative of the Russian Orthodox Church announced this on air on the Spas television company. The program with the participation of the archpriest was published on YouTube on July 25, but social network users only noticed it now. Many famous people are buried in Westminster Abbey. I recently talked
19:40 31.07.2019
"And you pay!" Bailiffs opened cases against 556 priestsThe Bailiff Service has opened enforcement proceedings against 556 clergy who are evading payment of traffic police fines, taxes, and so on... People who, due to their duty, so to speak, and their own elections, must set an example for everyone else, are by no means sinless. Journalist Sergei Kanev spoke about this funny phenomenon in his blog: In the minds of many Russians, priests are almost holy people. Meanwhile, priests are ordinary citizens who love money, good cars, delicious food, and are interested in cute
09:52 28.07.2019
A Muscovite told how protesters took refuge in a church from riot police with batonsThe priest of the Church of the Holy Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian, on Stoleshnikov Lane in Moscow, saved some of the supporters of fair elections from being detained by the police and the National Guard. Lidia Moniava, an employee of the House with a Lighthouse charity foundation, told how it happened on her Facebook page. According to her, when riot police attacked the crowd with batons, the cleric of the Orthodox church, John (Guaita), opened the doors for the rally participants, which the nearby McDonald's and shopping center did not do. A number of other protesters climbed over the church fence from the courtyard, where
06:52 28.07.2019
The church explained the assistance to the protesters on TverskayaHieromonk John explained to RBC the decision of the clergy of the Temple of Cosmas and Damian in Stoleshnikov Lane near Tverskaya Street in Moscow to allow participants in an uncoordinated protest in support of unregistered candidates for the city duma and help them hide from the police. We accepted these guys and girls, just as we would accept others, because it is the duty of an Orthodox church to accept any person who comes to the temple in one way or another, no matter whether he comes through the main door or climbs over the fence, we always accept everyone,
11:51 26.07.2019
The Kremlin subjugated the top of the Russian Orthodox Church - the “near-bureaucratic sect” stopped protecting the peopleIn modern Russia, relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the leadership of the state have returned to the Synodal period, when the Church was largely left without a voice and was subordinated to secular power. The former head of the Synodal Department for Interaction between Church and Society of the Moscow Patriarchate, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, drew attention to the fact that Patriarch Kirill had withdrawn himself from public discussion, and emphasized that this is a path of degradation. RIA Novy Den presents the second part of a large interview with a famous public and church figure who assessed the current
16:06 19.07.2019
The Russian Orthodox Church denied blocking the work of the ambulance in Sergiev Posad due to the arrival of the patriaReports that on July 18 in Sergiev Posad the ambulance service could not work for half an hour due to the arrival of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' in the city do not correspond to reality. This was reported by the press secretary of the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, priest Alexander Volkov, who was quoted by Interfax. The blockage of ambulance work due to the arrival of the Patriarch at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra was previously reported by Baza. The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church came to the opening ceremony of the complex to all those who suffered for their faith in Christ during the years of persecution and repression. traffic police
04:30 19.07.2019
In Sergiev Posad, due to the patriarch's visit, ambulance work was suspended for 20 minutesIn Sergiev Posad, due to the arrival of Patriarch Kirill, the only ambulance substation in the city was blocked due to road closures, Baza reports. According to doctors, their work was paralyzed for 30 minutes; the traffic police said that the road was blocked for 20 minutes. Substation employees said that at that moment there were three cars with crews on calls, and fourteen cars were locked in the parking lot. The patriarch's press secretary, Alexander Volkov, said that the issue of road closures is controlled by the traffic police, but the Russian Orthodox Church will sort it out
08:46 17.07.2019
In the Stalinist Russian Orthodox Church there was initially no God. He's not there nowAs has been written more than once, Patriarch Kirill justified the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR in a very original way. He stated that Hitler's invasion was God's punishment for the Soviet people for their godlessness and sins. If in June 1941 the then hierarchs of the Church had joyfully cried out about punishing the Soviet people for their atheism, they would have been immediately put up against the wall. We have no doubt about that. But they took positions completely loyal to the Soviet government, calling on the flock to repel the enemy. And even through the State Bank they collected donations for a tank column Dmitry
16:56 16.07.2019
Varlamov’s questions about the patriarch’s luxurious watch were cut from the program on SpasFrom the program I don’t believe it! A conversation with an atheist on the Orthodox TV channel Spas, which aired on July 13, removed the question from guest blogger Ilya Varlamov. The question concerned the ability of wealthy businessmen to buy forgiveness by making a donation to the church. In general, about the luxury of the patriarch, about his residence, watches and everything else was cut out. Well, about Yakunin, who is a thief, but the Russian Orthodox Church turns a blind eye to all his sins for the loot. I asked how much it costs so that the Russian Orthodox Church does not notice that you are a thief, Varlamov wrote on his Twitter. At the same time, according to him, the answer
11:34 16.07.2019
In whose interests are “non-traditional” believers persecuted in Russia?The problem of legal literacy has recently become very acute for believers whose religion is not considered traditional in Russia. Despite the fact that their faith is recognized throughout the world, in Russia all people of other faiths who do not fall under traditional confessions are clearly not considered equal. As a rule, they try to present such associations to the Russian public as some kind of sects, supposedly dangerous to society. And then Jehovah’s Witnesses have been recognized as an extremist organization and they are chasing Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout the country. It probably means that in
Their acquaintance lasted 35 years. He visited her in an apartment in a house near the Airport metro station, and she visited him at his country dacha near Leningrad. And they were brought together in 1980, according to the newspaper Sobesednik, by KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov. After which the sorceress began to work for the committee. Then the chief of Soviet state security aimed a number of his departments at studying psychophysiological phenomena in the human brain. In particular, the polygraph, which the party press invariably called the handmaiden of imperialism. However, the study of its properties was commissioned
06:54 12.07.2019
Did Monk Kirill forgive the sins of his girlfriend Juna?And no need to grin here. Needless to say, while our military spaceships plow the expanses of the Syrian sky, you remember the patriarchal sins of your youth. Why not? Monk Kirill was forbidden to sin at all times. And what a friendship he had with the sorceress Juna. It is probably no coincidence that Nadys hit the Ministry of Justice with his forehead, demanding that the fetus in a woman’s womb be recognized as a living being and endowed with all human rights. It is necessary to legislate the embryo’s right to life from the moment of conception, the archpastor wrote in his
19:00 08.07.2019
“Any Marie Curie is a rarity”: the Russian Orthodox Church said that women are stupider than menThe head of the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, said on Radio Radonezh that men in general are smarter than women. Women are weaker mentally. Of course, there are some Marie Curies, but still this is rare,” said the priest, as quoted by Interfax. Smirnov’s words caused a stormy reaction on social networks. The priest’s saying was also commented on by Elena Drapeko, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Culture. In her opinion, the spiritual shepherd offended Russian women, including
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 only 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, approximately half in their youth were promoted from the positions of subdeacons under the bishops then in office. But the fact that the majority of the Synod members have roots in Bessarabia and the south-east of Ukraine, in Donetsk and Lugansk, is almost impossible to calculate. Although this is the holy truth and the root of all modern troubles of Russian Orthodoxy, the author of the Lenta.ru investigation argued in 2018.
It is in southeastern Ukraine and eastern Moldova that the Russian Orthodox Church has traditionally maintained its most patriarchal views. It was here that hundreds of Orthodox Christians committed suicide back in tsarist times. This is where the hatred of 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. This is where Father Peter Kucher and many other princes of the Russian Orthodox Church come from.
Metropolises and dioceses
As of July 2018, the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church includes 79 metropolitanates and 356 dioceses, including:
Influence groups
Assets
Parishes
As of July 2018, almost 40 thousand elders, more than 5 thousand deacons and almost 400 bishops serve in the church.
In 1991, when the USSR collapsed and the religious revival began, the Russian Orthodox Church had about 6.5 thousand parishes, two thirds of them in Ukraine. As of August 2018, there are more than 36 thousand parishes in the Russian Orthodox Church, of which about 25 thousand are in Russia. The number of monasteries has exceeded a thousand - there was never such a number before the revolution. Three new parishes open every day.
In mid-2017, the thousandth monastery opened in Russia, and as of January 1, 2018, there were 1010 of them. For comparison: before the Khrushchev persecutions there were only 14 monasteries in the USSR (the majority were in the Ukrainian SSR), in the 1980s there were four ( Trinity-Sergius and Pskov-Pechersk Lavra, Riga Hermitage (nunnery) and the Assumption Monastery in Pyukhtitsa, Estonia).
Commercial activities
- "Artistic and production enterprise (HPP) "Sofrino"
- Hotel "Danilovskaya"
- management of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, owned by the Moscow Government
- OJSC "Ritual Orthodox Service" (as of 2016)
State support
Funding from the budget
According to RBC estimates, in 2012–2015, the Russian Orthodox Church and related structures received at least 14 billion rubles from the budget and from government organizations. Moreover, the 2016 budget version alone provides for 2.6 billion rubles.
In particular, in 2014–2015, over 1.8 billion rubles were allocated to Russian Orthodox Church organizations. for the creation and development of Russian spiritual and educational centers under the federal program “Strengthening the unity of the Russian nation and the ethnocultural development of the peoples of Russia.”
Another program supporting the church is “Culture of Russia”: since 2012, almost 10.8 billion rubles have been allocated for the preservation of religious objects within the program. 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 Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage.
Among the major recipients of contracts on the government procurement website is the Orthodox Encyclopedia church-scientific center (founded by the Patriarchate), which publishes a tome of the same name in 40 volumes edited by Patriarch Kirill. Since 2012, public schools and universities have spent about 250 million rubles on purchasing this book. And the subsidiary organization of the Orthodox Encyclopedia - the Orthodox Encyclopedia Foundation - received 56 million rubles in 2013. from the Ministry of Culture - for the filming 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's 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 another 178 million rubles for the hospital.
The budget for 2016 includes about 1 billion rubles. “The charitable foundation 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 Russian Orthodox Church has no direct relationship with the recipients of the grants, they simply “were created by Orthodox people,” explains Archpriest Chaplin. Although the church does not directly participate in the creation of such organizations, there are no random people there, says Sergei Chapnin, former editor of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate.
According to the same principle, he says, money is distributed in the only Orthodox grant program, “Orthodox Initiative” (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 benefits
As of August 2018, the Russian Orthodox Church, like any officially registered religious organization in Russia, has benefits, but every single one of them is key. She is completely exempt from paying:
That is, in fact, the Russian Orthodox Church does not pay anything to the budget at all.
The Tax Code of the Russian Federation clearly stipulates: exemption comes only from religious activities, and all commercial activities, even those carried out by the Russian Orthodox Church, are subject to mandatory taxation. Therefore, according to reports, the church does not conduct commercial activities at all. And there is no point in arguing with this. However, according to a high-ranking Russian official, in reality they simply do not want to get involved with the church.
| “Priests are now included in absolutely all elected bodies at all levels of government, from local parliaments to various kinds of public councils and supervisory commissions - right up to ministerial and federal ones. This, of course, is correct, but it opens the door for them to managers of any rank, where they can simply complain so that the commission is recalled or they turn a blind eye to the identified shortcomings. And believe me, the clergy take advantage of this. Moreover, on the direct orders of his leadership,” he explains. |
As paradoxical as it may sound, state support makes the entire economy of the Russian Orthodox Church black. Or gray - after all, not a single parish is accountable to anyone. No one checks them except the Church itself.
Transfer of real estate
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 uncovered the schemes of several gangs of “black realtors.” She was infiltrated into a group suspected of legalizing the apartments of old women who allegedly sold their homes and went to a monastery. She suddenly cut off all contact with the officer supervising her and shut down the operation on her own, and then sent her daughter to a church school, changed her clothing style and began attending 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 found refuge behind the church wall. In the summer of 2017, a certificate from the Ministry of Internal Affairs was even leaked to the press with a complaint about the abbots of churches obstructing the investigation. The answer to it from Archpriest Sergius was also made publicly available. He reports that the church sees no reason to provide passport data of persons in the dioceses.
Father Sergius himself, in the world 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 a black church uniform, and over the next 11 years made a dizzying career: he became an archpriest, a cleric of the Church of the Most Holy Theotokos 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 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 to allow law enforcement officers to take fingerprints from monastery employees and seize genetic material from them.
Pursuit of fugitives from monasteries
As you know, one of the most terrible church sins is escaping from the monastery. According to the charter, you cannot just leave the monastery - you must take off your vow, that is, become undressed. And this is a slow procedure, so it’s easier to run away - the secular authorities still don’t consider this an offense. As of July 2018, between 300 and 400 men and women were reported to have escaped from monasteries in the Russian Federation. The police do not formally accept such statements - escaping from a monastery is not considered a criminal offense, but such people need to be looked for and punished so that others are discouraged. This is done by the security service of the Russian Orthodox Church. True, such an organization does not officially 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 Russian Orthodox Church was among the founders of the Peresvet bank. It is there that, as of 2018, one of the most serious security services in Russia operates. In October 2017, it was headed by Oleg Feoktistov, a former FSB general, the author of an operational combination that resulted in a prison sentence for the Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukaev. Peresvet security officers were seen at at least two crime scenes associated with the Russian Orthodox Church, and at one of them, as a police operative would later write in an explanatory note, they were engaged in “fixing trace objects using forensic equipment.” That explanatory report was never put into action, and the crime itself remained unsolved. We are talking about the murder of a priest on the threshold of the St. Nicholas 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 actively conducts operational-search work - that is, it secretly collects information about people, including using technical means. For example, it identifies the phone numbers from which girls from Moseytsevo accessed the Internet. After all, few people can, upon seeing a profile on VKontakte, quickly find out from which phone number the person was online and calculate his location. Someone from the environment of the Moseytsev mothers did this in a matter of seconds. And a certain Matrona Yaroslavskaya, within a few minutes after discovering the girls’ profiles, knew not only their mobile numbers, but also the address of their newly created email. The identity of Matrona herself could not be established.
The same fate befell several journalists who wrote on church-related topics: they suddenly learned that the contents of their personal letters were becoming known to the highest church hierarchs. In other words, the security service of the Russian Orthodox Church does not formally exist, but in reality it is actively working. In any case, in December 2017, after the sentencing of the mothers from Moseytsevo, someone wanted to find out the fate of their adopted children. By that time, absolutely all their documents had been changed, but the registry office of the Yaroslavl region tried to obtain a list of issued birth certificates, and the directorate of the orphanage received a request, allegedly from a legal bureau, demanding to provide the girls’ personal files. And someone else searched and opened their email accounts, and did it very professionally.
One can argue for a long time whether there is a special unit of hacker monks within 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 knew verbatim the contents of their emails and correspondence in closed social network groups. And, despite the motto “the Internet is sinful,” followers of the church actively use the World Wide Web. Especially when you need to find someone.
There were many rumors that the princes of the Russian Orthodox Church had titles of the KGB of the USSR and party cards. This cannot be asserted - many priests in the 1980s were very oppositional and even opportunistic. But this cannot be considered an absolute lie either. In any case, in 2015, special religious departments operated within the structures of the territorial departments of the FSB, which essentially acted as arbitrators, especially at a time when conflicts gained resonance. In Moseytsevo, for example, it was the FSB officers who assured the criminal investigation operatives that no one would interfere with their investigation of the criminal case, but there was no need to dig to the side. In Bogolyubovo, officers from specialized FSB units also smoothed out rough edges. At the same time, it is the FSB in Moscow that is preventing the adoption of changes to laws that would make the budget of religious organizations transparent.
The Western press often says that money for bribes to officials and payment for intelligence information, especially political, comes to various countries through church channels. But in our country, this data, even in translated articles, does not appear. And not because someone formally prohibits it, there is internal censorship. In rare cases - the authority of the editor. It is no secret that it is Orthodox parishes that often provide assistance to compatriots.
Lack of labor legislation
In 2017, the educational commission of the Moscow Patriarchate came to check the Vladimir Theological Seminary, and almost by accident found out: out of a dozen reputable 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 contributions to the Pension Fund. They received their salaries in envelopes and thought that was how it was supposed to be. Having learned the truth, we went to bow to the Patriarchate. And there they said: the pension will be paid by those whom you have now trained. In fact, the matter was put on hold. People quit their jobs, but no one will make up for the years they missed - neither in length of service, nor in mandatory deductions. And these teachers have nowhere to go - the Russian Orthodox Church has a monopoly on spiritual education.
Russians will be very surprised when they find out: 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 written out for the required minimum of clergy. But no one has employment contracts. They didn’t even develop a standard form.
Priests' salaries
As of 2018, the salary of a Russian priest ranges from 20 to 40 thousand rubles per month. Some say that personal income tax is withheld from them, some say that they are completely exempt from taxes. The abbot receives much more.
Moreover, in the conditions of the hierarchy, issues of prestige manifest themselves especially clearly. Therefore, an ordinary priest will never buy a car more prestigious than that of a rector; the rector will not appear in public wearing a watch more expensive than the bishop's; and the bishop will not have a rarity that the patriarch does not have. Therefore, the desire to stand out manifests itself differently.
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 agency employees, the abbess was going to pay her personal money.
Workers' and Peasants' Army
In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, a fundamental problem of the Russian Orthodox Church arose: there was essentially no one to revive the religion and its institutions. After all, all the churchmen were exterminated as a class.
| “The growth rate of the Russian Orthodox Church is colossal,” said Father Nikolai 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 book Orthodoxy: the world was going to hell, it would not last long, the third world war was ahead, we had to save ourselves - and a mass of destitute people from broken families flocked to monasteries in search of, if not better life, then with the thought of where to save your children from debauchery, from alcohol, from drugs, from prostitution. Then the monasteries were still such utopian communities of Tommaso Campanella (the author of “City of the Sun”, according to V.I. Lenin, is one of the predecessors of scientific socialism) and represented not so much Orthodoxy as military communism. People all left the Soviet Union with the collective farm as a model. This is what they built, not the apostolic community. Therefore, what turned out to be not God’s houses, but the same collective farms, only with the Gospel in their hands. People from Bessarabia and south-eastern Ukraine were especially valued. And it naturally happened that out of all possible Orthodoxies 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 city life. Why do peasants need passports? "Taxpayer Identification Number" (TIN)? Books? Cards? Travel abroad? Peasants have always lived from 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 is traditionally less educated than the white clergy. This is our specificity, in contrast, for example, to Catholics: their monks are more educated than parish priests. Since then, since the revival of the Church, people who have taken monastic vows have made a crazy career. Lightning fast. Where a white priest had to plow and plow, serve and serve, blacks could, in two years, decorate themselves with everything they could, and take positions that an ordinary priest had never dreamed of. Accordingly, from rags to riches, without education - without corresponding length of service - forward. These are again Stalin’s 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 district-level chief looked like this: eight years 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 defrocked pop singer living in the Baikal region easily explained the everyday tricks of the lower echelon of Russian Orthodoxy.
| - If you want to recover, go beyond Ural-Kamen. They take everyone there - the last bandits and convicts. The more serious the crime, the further east you have to go. It’s very difficult here, but they count a day as three. I personally know a dozen completely officially ordained elders, each of whom is a convict and 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 don't pay you 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 hermitages 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 uncomprehendingly, and then said: “You don’t know life there at all in Europe.” We don’t make a fuss about such nonsense. The law is taiga. Look for fistulas.
According to him, dozens of people, mostly released prisoners, are missing. They end up in distant villages, where they work for free for the benefit of the church.
He clarified that these so-called Orthodox monasteries are often protected by law enforcement officers. But they protect - the word is not very accurate: they do not take money for concealment. Another thing is more curious: since the 1990s, those released from prison began to actively settle in monasteries in Central Russia, and later in the Russian south. There is even a term for them - “winter monks,” that is, those who take monastic vows for the winter in order to sit out the harsh times in warmth and satiety. In fact, according to law enforcement officials, a unique symbiosis has arisen: the bearers of criminal culture ensure order in monasteries using Zonov 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. Over the course of a year, he inspected almost all 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 graduated 550 seminarians, of whom 70% became clergy, and the rest work in various synodal structures.
1994-2018
From 1994 to 2018, the Patriarchate’s Educational Committee was headed by Archbishop Evgeniy (Reshetnikov). After several attempts at reform, stagnation reigned in the economy under his jurisdiction.
Numerous provincial seminaries, which opened in the wake of the “religious revival” of the 1990s, could not find applicants or funds to feed students. But even the country's leading theological schools - the Moscow and St. Petersburg academies - catastrophically lost 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 for at least three years after receiving a diploma to work in the church or to cover astronomical amounts for training and maintenance at their own expense. Under Evgeniy, theological schools of the Russian Orthodox Church switched to the Bologna system, which implied a two-level structure of higher education: the seminary course was equated to a bachelor's degree, and the academic course 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 Martí International Airport. This was due to the fact that Patriarch Kirill from the very beginning 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 negotiations in Cuba was the discussion of pressing social, political and moral problems of our time. The final document, which was signed by the patriarch and the pope, spoke, in particular, about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The hierarchs called on the international community "to take immediate action to prevent further displacement of Christians from the Middle East." In addition, they made a call to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. One of the fundamental points of the document is the recognition by the Pope that union is not a means of restoring church unity. The document also spoke about the protection of family values and the rapprochement of Orthodox and Catholic positions on the issue of proselytism: the parties called for abandoning it, 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, 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
At the end of the 1980s, when the church revival, officially called the “return to faith,” began in the USSR, there were 6.5 thousand parishes in the Russian Orthodox Church. Of these, almost 4 thousand are in Ukraine, with the majority in its southeastern part. There are about 500 more in Moldova - more precisely, in that part of it that was traditionally called the Bessarabia province, or Bessarabia. At that time there were three seminaries in the USSR - Zagorsk, Leningrad and Odessa, and two Theological Academies - Moscow and Leningrad. State policy was such that most of their applicants already had incomplete higher secular education.
