The Russian Orthodox Church election of a new patriarch next week is shaping up as a vote for or against Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad.  Already the acting head of the Church since the death of Patriarch Alexiy II last month, Kirill is the clear frontrunner and the man who other churches — especially the Roman Catholic Church — would like to see take the top post. Those two factors, though, could work against him when the Council of Bishops and the Local Council — the two bodies that conduct the election — meet.

(Photo: Metropolitan Kirill, 6 Jan 2009/Alexander Natruskin)

Dmitry Solovyov in our Moscow bureau has provided a rundown of the leading candidates in the election, which begins with the meeting of the Council of Bishops on Jan. 25-26, and a rundown of the leading candidates. The bishops will propose three candidates, who will then be voted on by the Local Council of 711 representatives of clergy and laity during its Jan. 27-29 session. The new patriarch will be installed on Feb. 1.

This will be the first patriarchal election since the end of the Soviet Union (the last one was in 1990, a year before communism collapsed there) and since the spectacular revival of the Russian Orthodox Church. One effect very visible abroad was the higher profile the Church has taken in ecumenical exchanges. Less visible to those outside Russia are the different currents in the Church, such as nationalists, anti-westerners, critics of ecumenism and others, who oppose that new openness and activism. If they can close ranks, they could block Kirill’s ascension.

“The vote will largely be for or against Kirill,” Antoine Nivière, editor of the Service orthodoxe de presse in Paris, told a meeting of religion journalists in the French capital this week. “If he cannot impose himself, a third man may emerge from among the older metropolitans with long experience.”

If Kirill is the candidate for a more modern and outward-looking Church, Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk is the conservative standard bearer. “Kliment is the candidate of the Russian state,” Jean-François Colossimo, a theologian at the Saint Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, told the same meeting. “Kliment gives the impression of being conservative and dependable. Kliment represents continuity in the tradition of an Russian Orthodox Church subservient to the state.”

(Photo: Funeral of Patriarch Alexiy II in Moscow, 9 Dec 2008/Sergei Karpukhin)

Colossimo’s conclusion was clear: “This is a critical choice. If the choice is between Kirill and Kliment, it’s about meeting these challenges or hibernating.

“Kirill is aware of these challenges,” he added, turning to ecumenical questions. “It will be good news for Rome to have a patriarch who knows there is a whole world out there… Rome focuses on Moscow. It’s more than half of the Orthodox world. They think, if they don’t have Moscow, they only have bits and pieces. The rest of the Orthodox world has great people, such as Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and vibrant churches like Romania. But none of them have the numbers or the resources of the Moscow Patriarchate. So this election is decisive for the Orthodox world and decisive for Orthodox relations with the West. The personality of the next patriarch, the margins of manoeuvre he has, the way he deals with Orthodox liturgy or relations with the diaspora, the links he can make with the outside world and the way he deals with questions of order within the Church will determine how the Orthodox world deals with Rome and with the Protestants. It will determine the place of the Orthodox in interreligious relations and in the globalised world.“

One of the most intriguing questions about the voting for a  new Russian Orthodox patriarch on Jan. 27-29 has been answered. Speculation about the succession began as soon as the late Patriarch Alexiy died in December, but it had an unusual extra layer of uncertainty. Orthodox church leaders sometimes elect the top three candidates and then pick the winner by drawing lots. This, they say, lets the Holy Spirit have the final say. So even a strong front-runner could be passed over.

During the Roman Catholic Church’s papal transition in 2005,  we speculated about the papabili (papal contenders) for days and explained in detail the complex rules for the election of a new pope. The “apostolic method,” as the election by lots is called, would inject additional uncertainty into the Orthodox vote — if  they used it.

(Photo: Metropolitan Kirill leads Orthodox Christmas service in Moscow’s Christ The Saviour Cathedral, 7 Jan. 2009/pool)

But Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the acting patriarch who is also a front-runner, has indicated that this wild card has been taken out of the patriarchal election procedure. In an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax, he said earlier heads of the Church had usually been chosen by the tsar or elected in open ballots. “His Holiness Patriarch Alexiy II was elected by secret ballot out of three candidates suggested by the Archbishop Council,” Kirill said. “Years of his ministry proved it was the right choice made by God’s will.”

Kirill made clear the Holy Spirit was not completely sidelined even with a secret ballot. He said the Church leaders believed that prayers by the council participants “backed up by prayer of the whole Church will open hearts and minds of the council members for perceiving the message of the Holy Spirit.”

Kirill, 64, has headed the Church’s department for external relations for two decades and has been active in the ecumenical movement abroad. While he is considered a front-runner, he reportedly does not have strong support among the bishops, who are considered more nationalist and less outward-looking than he is. Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk is said to be more to their liking. Metropolitan Juvenali of Krutitsy and Kolomna and Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk are also mentioned as possible contenders. as

The Russian Orthodox are wasting no time with the election of their new leader to replace the late Patriarch Alexiy. Although Church statutes give them six months to ponder the decision, a Holy Synod meeting today decided to hold a General Council in late January to elect a successor.

“On Jan. 27 the General Council will open. It will be held on Jan. 28-29,” acting Partriarch Kirill — one of the frontrunning candidates — said in Moscow.

“Jan. 30-31 will be dedicated to preparations for the enthronement of the newly elected Holy Patriarch. The enthronement will be held on Feb. 1,” he told journalists in Moscow.

(Photo:Acting Patriarch Kirill at Alexiy’s funeral, 9 Dec 2008/Sergei Karpukhin)

Here is our video from the funeral of the late Patriarch Alexiy:

The Russian Orthodox Church has chosen Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad as its interim leader, picking one of its best-known personalities to stand in until a successor to the late Patriarch Alexiy II can be chosen. The Church’s charter says this must happen within the next six months, but crucially does not say exactly how the new man should be picked. That introduces a potential wild card into the equation, the so-called “apostolic method” of election that leaves the final decision to be decided by drawing lots.

(Photo: Metropolitan Kirill, 19 Oct 2008/Ramon Espinosa)

Kirill, 64, has headed the Church’s department for external relations for two decades and has been active in the ecumenical movement abroad. He is considered relatively open to cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church, which has been trying for years to arrange a papal visit to Moscow despite tensions over Orthodox charges the Vatican is trying to win over Orthodox to Catholicism. At home, most Russians see him as the public face of the Church, at least partly because of his frequent appearances on television.

While he is considered a front-runner, he reportedly does not have strong support among the bishops, who are considered more nationalist and less outward-looking than he is. Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk is said to be more to their liking. Metropolitan Juvenali of Krutitsy and Kolomna and Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk are also mentioned as possible contenders.

Those names would put question marks over the outcome of a secret ballot with multiple candidates, the way Alexiy was picked in 1990. But the Church synod could opt for the “apostolic method” in which the synod (made up of clergy and laity) vote for the leading candidates and the new leader is drawn by lots from among the top three names. The Church used this method in 1917 to pick Patriarch Tikhon, its first leader after the patriarchate was restored following a 200-year suppression. The Serbian Orthodox Church used it in 1990 to select Patriarch Pavle and apparently plans to use it for his successor.

(Photo:Pope Benedict XVI and Metropolitan Kirill at the Vatican, 7 Dec 2007/Osservatore Romano)

This method is called “apostolic” because the original Apostles used it to replace the traitor Judas (Acts 1:26). The idea is to allow room for the Holy Spirit to guide the choice. The Russians used this method several times in the Middle Ages, sometimes asking a blind man to draw the lots to rule out any possible human influence on the final result.

The death of Russian Orthodox Patriach Alexiy II and talk about his possible successor got Aleksandras Budrys, a correspondent in our Moscow bureau, to reminiscing about how he covered Alexiy’s election in 1990 for the official news agency TASS. Here’s his account of reporting on religion near the end of communism in Russia:

(Photo: Patriarch Alexiy II, 30 April 2000/Vladimir Suvorov)

As a TASS correspondent for religious issues, I was the first to report the election of Patriarch Alexiy II in early June 1990. The scoop was made possible because I was allowed to stay in monk’s cells at the monastery where the vote took place while all the other journalists were sent away.

The election process took a little less than three days. On the first day, all the hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church gathered at the refectory church at the Holy Trinity and St Sergius monastery outside Moscow.

The press was only allowed to attend the start of the meeting and was then directed to leave the church. Since they were told the election would take more than a day, the reporters returned to Moscow. But I was allowed to stay at the monastery, as by the time I had developed good relations with the Patriarchate’s Foreign Relations Department and its spokesman.

The council meeting was interrupted only once, when one of the candidates to the post (one of the then metropolitans, Filaret of Kiev and All Ukraine, who is currently the head of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church) left the gathering without saying a word after discovering that he was not in the running.

I was allowed to spend the night in a cell with monastery novices and most of the day in another cell close to the refectory church along with the priest holder-of-the-keys and the Metropolitan of Vienna and all Austria Iriney . The latter had decided not to sit with others, preferring to stay with us and drink church wine, smoke St Moritz cigarettes — a foreign brand that was a rarity in Russia — and tell jokes that had nothing to do with religion.

In the early hours of the third day, June 7, we were all summoned to the refectory church to hear the solemn announcement of the election of Metropolitan Alexiy of Leningrad and Novgorod as His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.

When I phoned in the news to TASS, the duty editor asked me to swear to God that it was really Alexiy who had been elected. I said I could not, as I was not baptised back then.

(Photo: A 27-tonne bell is installed in belltower at Holy Trinity and Saint Sergius monastery, 4 Sept 2002/Alexander Natruskin)

A Saudi offer to build a large mosque in Moscow has prompted Russian Orthodox organisations to ask for permission to build an Orthodox church in Saudi Arabia. Several western Christian churches have asked for or suggested such reciprocity with Saudi Arabia, which funds mosques abroad but bans any religion but Islam at home. It’s an issue that can only become more pressing if King Abdullah continues to preach interfaith dialogue and tolerance around the globe while not practicing it at home.

The Russian Muftis Council announced the Saudi offer to fund a mosque last week, promting an open letter to King Abdullah a few days later by what Interfax news agency called Orthodox public organisations. It didn’t come from the Russian Orthodox Church itself, but watch this space. The Russians have become increasingly active on the world religious scene as they emerge from the communist era and it would not be surprising to see them take a position on this question as well. There is probably also a domestic angle to this. Islam is the second largest religion in Russia and growing, so the Orthodox Church might feel a bit of competition.

(Photo: St. Basil’s Cathedral on Moscow’s Red Square, 27 Jan 2007/Denis Sinyakov)

“You often say that Islam is a religion of justice. However, if Saudi Arabia builds mosques in dozens of Christian countries, isn’t it just to build a church for Christians living in Your Kingdom!” says the letter quoted by Interfax. “It would be just to create the same conditions for Saudi Christians as Muslims have in Russia … It is the only way to make interreligious dialogue honest and just.”

Read the full text of the letter in English here. It says Moscow already has two mosques but IslamOnline speaks of six.

Do you think it’s important to see churches built in Saudi Arabia? Should this be a litmus test for assessing Abdullah’s dialogue campaign?

The separistist movements at the heart of the Georgian crisis have split the Georgian Orthodox Church as well. As our correspondent Oliver Bullough reports from Abkhazia, the monks at the Novy Afon monastery have declared independence from the Georgian church and now work more closely with fellow Orthodox from Russia.

“Are we supposed to be Georgians? We have nothing in common with them,” Father Vissarion, the head of the rebel state’s church, told him.

Read the full feature here.

Recognising when religion plays a part in a military conflict can be a tricky business. Its role can easily be overemphasized, underplayed or misunderstood. Having covered several such conflicts myself, I was curious when I saw Ted Olsen’s post at Christianty Today about how John McCain stresses Georgia’s Christian heritage when talking about its conflict with Russia. When Russian forces rolled into Georgia in support of pro-Moscow separatists there,  McCain’s reaction statement noted that Georgia was “one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion.” In his televised discussion with leading evangelical pastor Rick Warren on Saturday, he said “the king of then Georgia in the third century converted to Christianity. You go to Georgia and you see these old churches that go back to the fourth and fifth century.”

History is fascinating but McCain’s use of it here begs the question whether there is an actual faith factor in this conflict or just in his presentation of it. Russia, after all, is also a traditionally Christian nation, but he made no mention of that. After the fall of communism there, the Russian Orthodox Church has resumed its traditional role there — as has the Georgian Orthodox Church in the Caucasian republic after state-sponsored atheism lost out there too. There are no obvious doctrinal disputes that divide them.

Church-to-church relations also seem reasonable. According to the Russian news agency Interfax, senior officials of the two churches spoke by telephone last week and “declared their common peacemaking position and readiness to cooperate in this field.” Patriarchs of both churches have called for a ceasefire and condemned the violence among fellow Christians. “Orthodox Christians are among those who have raised their hands against each other. Orthodox peoples called by the Lord to live in fraternity and love confront each other,” Russia’s Primate Alexiy II said. “What is most important (is that) we (are) united with Christian faith and must live peacefully without blood,” Georgian Catholicos Patriarch Ilia II said.

Since Orthodox churches are organised nationally, each side naturally reflects in some way its own country’s political view of the crisis. But even in his protest letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, Ilia’s only reference to religion was his lament that Orthodox were killing each other.

Other religious authorities — Pope Benedict after an Angelus prayer and the World Council of Churches and Conference of European Churches in a joint statement — have also mentioned the two countries’ common Christian heritage in their calls for a ceasefire but not implied it played any role in the conflict.

On his Crunchy Con blog, Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher — a convert to Orthodoxy — branded McCain’s comments as “total and shameless pandering to Evangelicals. As if Russia isn’t a Christian nation. As if Russia hasn’t been Christian for over a thousand years. As if Christianity had anything to do with this conflict.”

Beliefnet editor-in-chief Steven Waldman saw McCain signalling three possible messages to evangelical voters: (1) I think having Christianity as an official religion is a fine idea in general, (2) This is just like the Cold War when the forces of Christianity are at war with the forces of Atheism or (3) I view the protection of Christians from attack worldwide as an important goal.”

What do you think? Does McCain’s selective mention of religion have any relevance to this conflict?

With some news events, not much happens but the atmosphere is so striking that it’s worth mentioning all the same. That was the case in Moscow this week as Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, met Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexiy II.

Though this was an unofficial visit, the patriarch and the cardinal both took care to use language noticeable for its friendly, accommodating and even warm tone in their greetings - a continuation of what is seen as a “thaw” and “emerging cooperation” between the two churches.

“I am convinced of the necessity in an Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, based on the coincidence of our positions on many of the issues facing the Christian world today,” Alexiy told Kasper. “I believe (your) interest in the life and traditions of the (Orthodox) Church will turn out to be important between our two Churches.”

For his part, Kasper returned the greeting in kind: “We have met more than once now, but each time I meet with you I do so with great happiness. And I hope this meeting will enable further development in our relations, contacts and cooperation.”

He also brought a personal message from Pope Benedict who praised the “growing closeness between us, accompanied by the shared desire to promote authentic Christian values and to witness to our Lord in ever deeper communion.”

In private the two men discussed issues of religious education at Catholic orphanages for those baptised Russian Orthodox and the spread of the Uniate faith in western Ukraine, an area seen by Moscow as within Russian Orthodoxy’s canonical territory.

The elephant in the room, which the two men did not discuss in front of reporters, was whether the formerly frosty relations between the two churches had thawed enough to facilitate a future meeting between Alexiy and Benedict, something the Pope is actively seeking. Only last October, the Russians walked out of a theological dialogue meeting with the Catholic Church in Ravenna, Italy in protest over a doctrinal issue.

“Nothing concrete was said about this, but there was a confirmation on principle that a meeting is possible,” a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church told reporters after the meeting. “But, as His Holiness the Patriarch said, this kind of meeting has to be well planned so that it isn’t just a photo-opportunity.”

While in Russia, Kasper also toured Orthodox dioceses in Nizhny Novgorod, Smolensk and Kazan to pray at icons there before stopping in Moscow, a gesture seen as a welcome sign of respect for the Russian church.

Jews are returning to Russia. For as long as anyone alive can remember, the flow was mostly in the other direction. But Amie Ferris-Rotman and Conor Sweeney in our Moscow bureau have found a return wave, despite a persistent anti-Semitism there:

Around one million Jews fled during the Soviet era and the post-communist chaos. Those returning now from Israel, the United States and Europe hope to use their new skills and old knowledge to do business.

“Now there are services here, like in New York and Paris, but the lifestyle is more interesting than in either of them — it’s easy to understand why thousands are coming back,” said Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Russian Jewish Congress.

Hard statistics on Jews returning to Russia do not exist, said Satanovsky, but anecdotal evidence is there. He estimates 80,000-120,000 Russian Jews have returned, plus many more who originated in other Soviet republics.

Read the whole feature here.