Moscow Patriarchate concerns: Youth and neighbouring nations
Synod approves reorganisation of Orthodox Church, also in light of war with Ukraine. New department will define ways of assisting the "foreign neighbour", the nations once under the USSR. Nominations for the exarchate of Africa to be made shortly.
Moscow (AsiaNews) - The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church met in plenary session a few days ago, approving a series of documents and projects to reorganise the work of the patriarchate, also in the light of the new situations being created following the military operation in Ukraine. The main concern is for the formation of young people, particularly marked by the contradictions of the war, and very important are the provisions aimed at "pastoral control" of the countries bordering on Russia, variously involved in the conflict.
At the suggestion of the young bishop Serafim (Amelčenkov), director of the Synodal Department for Youth Ministry, the Synod approved a new "Concept of the organisation of work with young people and their service in the Russian Orthodox Church", which completes and develops a similar document from 2019, discussed among the bishops over the past three years.
The 56-page text has been supplemented at the behest of Patriarch Kirill (Gundjaev) by a historical presentation of youth care since the origins of Russian Christianity in Baptism in 988, which has "determined the subsequent course of the spiritual and historical-cultural journey of our people". It recalls the "religious training institutions, born in monasteries and churches, which were the basis of the patriotic system of all education and instruction of the younger generations", to which it is necessary to refer today.
One of the most important decisions of the Synod then concerned "the administration of eparchies in the Near Foreign Countries", a very typical expression of the Soviet period that had fallen into disuse: "Far Foreign" were the Western countries and those with a different socio-ideological approach, while "Near Foreign" indicated the nations under the control of the Soviet Union, especially those in Eastern Europe.
Now a new ad hoc department has been set up for their pastoral care, at the wish of Patriarch Kirill himself, entrusted to his vicar Pavel (Ponomarev), former exarch of Belarus and now metropolitan of Krutitsky and Kolomna, the historic vicariate seat of Moscow. Under his jurisdiction the activities of the patriarchal Church in Ukraine, the exarchate of Belarus, the Churches in the Baltic countries and the two metropolises of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, as well as the Russian eparchy of Azerbaijan, i.e. the patriarchal structures in the former Soviet space, are to be coordinated.
The new department has the power to define the assistance of its foreign neighbours in various ways, expanding its competencies according to the needs of the Russian faithful present in the various countries or on the move, including military missions. The positions of Russian bishops and metropolitans in these countries will be reviewed, also on the basis of the positions they have taken with regard to the operations in Ukraine.
One of these "neighbouring" Churches is also the Russian eparchy in Armenia, whose responsibility, however, is entrusted to a hierarch with much broader geographical and "political" perspectives. He is Metropolitan Leonid (Gorbačev), who also holds the position of Russian exarch for Africa, thus uniting the near and distant dimensions of the "Orthodox-Soviet" abroad.
The African patriarchal exarchate was also considered during the synod session, approving its new statute that specifies the different competences and organisational arrangements for the various countries and areas of the part of the continent disputed by the Greek patriarchate of Alexandria. New appointments of ecclesiastical leaders for these areas will be announced shortly, in order to create a more stable and widespread structure.
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24/10/2019 17:56
14/10/2019 09:15
