Willem van Buren
05-12-08, 10:54
Russische patriarch Aleksej II overleden
MOSKOU (ANP) - De Russische patriarch Aleksej II is vrijdag overleden. Dat meldden Russische media. Het hoofd van de Russische Orthodoxe Kerk stierf in zijn residentie even buiten de hoofdstad Moskou, aldus een zegsman van de Kerk.
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Aleksej Mikhailovitsj Ridiger werd op 23 februari 1929 geboren in Tallinn, hoofdstad van Estland. In 1990 volgde hij Pimen op als patriarch van Moskou. Hij loodste de Russisch-Orthodoxe Kerk door de roerige periode na de val van het communisme.
Sinds het einde van de Sovjet-Unie is de kerk in Rusland opgebloeid. Onder Aleksej bleef de kerk aanschurken tegen de staatsmacht om haar positie als hoeder van de Russische ziel te herwinnen en te verstevigen. Hij kwam in de afgelopen jaren vooral in het nieuws door zijn verzet tegen een verzoening met de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk.
Willem van Buren
05-12-08, 11:38
Patriarch Alexy II, Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Dead at 79
05 December 2008
Patriarch Alexy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church who presided over a vast post-Soviet revival of faith but was accused of making the church a force for nationalism, died Friday his at Moscow region home, the church said. He was 79 years old.
The Moscow Patriarchate said he died at his residence in Peredelkino, outside Moscow, but did not give a cause of death. Alexy had long suffered from a heart ailment. Diplomats in Moscow had also said that Alexy had been suffering from cancer.
Alexy was born Alexei Mikhailovich Ridiger on Feb. 23, 1929, in Tallinn, the capital of then-sovereign Estonia. His father, a Russian of Swedish descent, had emigrated in 1917 from Petrograd. A devout Orthodox Christian, Mikhail Ridiger worked in Tallinn as an engineer and participated in the RSKhD — Russian Students' Christian Movement, which marked the return of Russian intellectuals to the church.
Alexy became leader of the church in 1990, as the officially atheist Soviet Union was loosening its restrictions on religion. After the Soviet Union collapsed the following year, the church's popularity surged. Church domes that had been stripped of their gold under the Soviets were regilded, churches that had been converted into warehouses or left to rot in neglect were painstakingly restored and hours-long masses on major religious holidays were broadcast live on national television.
Alexy's 18-year reign was marred by allegations that he and many other leading church officials had collaborated with the Soviet secret police.
In 2000, the Keston Institute, an Oxford-based group that monitors eastern church affairs, said it had uncovered evidence that Alexy was a KGB collaborator, citing material from KGB archives.
The church has repeatedly denied the allegations.
By the time of Alexy's death, the church's flock was estimated at including about two-thirds of Russia's 142 million people, making it the world's largest Orthodox church.
But Alexy often complained that Russia's new religious freedom put the church under severe pressure, and he bitterly resented what he said were attempts by other Christian churches to poach adherents among people who should have belonged to the Orthodox church.
These complaints focused on the Roman Catholic Church, and Alexy refused to agree to a papal visit to Russia unless the proselytism issue was resolved. However, Alexy lived long enough to see another major religious dispute resolved. In 2007, he signed a pact with Metropolitan Laurus, the leader of the breakaway Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, to bring the churches closer together. The U.S.-based ROCOR had split off in 1927, after the Moscow church's leader declared loyalty to the Communist government.
Alexy successfully lobbied for the 1997 passage of a religion law that places restrictions on the activities of religions other than Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. Under his leadership, the church also vehemently opposed schismatic Orthodox churches in neighboring Ukraine, claiming the Ukrainian church should remain under Moscow's control.
In a first reaction, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said he was "so shocked that it is very hard for me to find words on the spot," Interfax reported. "I respected him deeply."
State television immediately began running excerpts from what it said was Alexy's last television interview in late October.
Though he had been visibly in poor health recently, Alexy maintained a busy schedule.
On Friday he had been expected to attend a discussion on Russian language and spirituality at Christ the Savior Cathedral in central Moscow, Interfax reported.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who was on an official visit to India, was expected to make a statement on the death later Friday. (AP, MT, Reuters)