Orthodox exiles to rejoin Moscow after 80 years

MOSCOW, May 17 (Reuters) The Russian Orthodox church will heal an 80-year-old rift today when a splinter group set up in the West by refugees fleeing the Soviet Union rejoins the main church in Moscow.

Exiles who supported the last Tsar Nicholas II and opposed the communists, set up the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad after defeat in a civil war in the 1920s. They established a headquarters first in Serbia but later moved to New York.

The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad cut ties with the orthodox hierarchy in Russia because it said they had fallen under the ''Godless'' Bolsheviks -- the forerunners to the communists.

A few hundred people queued in the rain today waiting to enter Moscow's gold domed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour - blown up by the Soviet Union but rebuilt after the collapse of communism -- where the reunification ceremony will take place.

''We're all together now, I've a great feeling about today,'' 39-year-old Russian emigre Andrei Sybbottin, said as he waited wearing a beige suit. He is a cook in Canada but said he was considering moving back to Russia because of the reunification of the churches.

Alexiy II, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Metropolitan Laurus, the New York-based leader of the church abroad, will sign a document restoring severed links.

The act is steeped in symbolism for Russians who consider it a way of reconnecting with their pre-Soviet past. It also cements the resurgence of religion since the collapse of atheist communism.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has played up close ties between the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church since he took over the presidency in 2000 and is expected to attend the service along with members of the Romanov family - which ruled Russia for four centuries before the 1917 revolutions.

On Saturday the two church leaders will consecrate a new church in southern Moscow on a site where communists murdered priests and monarchists.

The church abroad represents about a third of the Russian Orthodox diaspora Russia and represents the most traditional, pro-monarchist faction.

Some of its members say they will leave the church because of the re-unification. They say the church in Moscow has been irredeemably tarnished by its association with the communists.

REUTERS GL PM1101