Exile church head hails Russia's spiritual revival

SAN FRANCISCO, May 9: The head of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad hailed the rebirth of religion in Russia as his church pondered reunification with once bitter rivals in Moscow, but in a speech made available he said the exile church would still maintain some independence.

Whether to reunify with the Moscow Patriarchate is the main issue before the All-Diaspora Council now meeting in San Francisco for only the fourth time since the church was set up after the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Headquartered off Park Avenue in New York City, the exile church long criticized the Moscow Patriarchate for collaborating with the atheistic Soviet state, including with the KGB secret police. But in recent years the two churches have grown closer.

Some within the exile church remain wary about closer ties with Moscow, and Metropolitan Laurus addressed such scepticism in a speech on Sunday that was made available on the church's Internet site yesterday.

''I wish to reply to those brazen critics who have not studied the essence of these issues, who have not read the official documents, or who have ignored, for example, the act of repentance read by the present Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Alexiy II, immediately following the fall of communism in Russia,'' he said.

''Others are frankly too lazy to bother to look at the bountiful, obvious evidence of what is happening in Russia before our eyes, and that is a miracle and nothing else.'' A Russian-language text of the same speech had a more cautious tone and suggested that full reunification with the Moscow church would not happen.

Laurus spoke instead of unity on spiritual issues with the Church Abroad keeping administrative independence, saying they understood the needs of their parishioners better than Moscow.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexiy II, the head of the Moscow-based church, has expressed hope in recent weeks that the two churches would put aside past differences and move toward reunification.

''The more time passes, the less Russian the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad will remain,'' he told Trud newspaper last month. ''So this could be the last opportunity to bring together within one church two parts of the Russian people who were divided for political reasons as a result of the 1917 tragedy.'' The Orthodox Church was formed after Christianity's Great Schism between East and West in 1054, largely over the issue of the authority of the Pope.

The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad serves about 350 communities worldwide, including in the United States, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Ukraine and inside Russia.

REUTERS