Russian Orthodox Church a growing political force

MOSCOW -- The glittering Christ the Savior Cathedral is more than just Moscow's most opulent place of worship. Built in the 1990s as a replica of a church dynamited by Communists in 1931, the cathedral symbolizes the Moscow Patriarchate's rising political influence -- which may be greater today than at any time since the 17th century. It also serves as global headquarters of business operations that experts say are worth several billion dollars.

To tens of millions of Russian Orthodox believers, the church is first a sacred institution, a pillar of Russia's 1,000-year-old identity and culture.

The death of Patriarch Alexy II in December caused an outpouring of grief. On Feb. 1, top clerics enthroned Alexy's successor, Kirill, in a cathedral filled with celebrities and political leaders. The first person to receive communion from Patriarch Kirill was President Dmitry Medvedev's wife, Svetlana.

These events would have been unimaginable in the Soviet era, when the officially atheist Communist government defrocked and imprisoned tens of thousands of clerics of all creeds. Now, the church "has become a serious power in society," former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said last month.

But critics claim that in the past decade, the Moscow Patriarchate has sacrificed some of its spiritual authority in the pursuit of political power and commercial success. Some go as far as to compare the church to its former nemesis, the Communist Party's ruling Politburo. Roman Lunkin of the Keston Institute, which studies religion in the former Soviet Union, says the church has "turned into an authoritarian and totalitarian structure."

A priest who condemned the 2005 conviction and imprisonment of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a leading foe of then-President Vladimir Putin, was defrocked and appointed to guard a church store in 2006. The church said the decision had to do with the priest's "discipline."

Bishop Diomid of Chukotka, who lambasted Alexy II's alleged subservience to the Kremlin, found himself demoted to the rank of a monk last year. The church accused Diomid's supporters of planning to seize power in the Patriarchate.

A church council excommunicated Gleb Yakunin, a priest and former lawmaker, in 1997 after he headed a government commission that concluded that most top clerics were KGB informers. Today, Yakunin, 74, who spent years in gulags for criticizing Soviet religious policies, leads the Apostolic Orthodox Church, a splinter group that is harassed by authorities in Russia and Belarus.

Despite the Russian constitution's legal separation of church and state, President Boris Yeltsin and his successor, Putin, forged a political alliance with the church, an alliance that has continued under Medvedev.

The church has blessed Kremlin plans to eliminate some social benefits for the elderly, called on youth to volunteer for military service in Chechnya and consecrated battleships and nuclear missiles. It also has supported the Kremlin's official ideology, which asserts that Russia's unique historic role makes it unsuited for Western-style liberal democracy.

Its political loyalty has paid handsomely. Federal and local authorities have granted the church donations, tax breaks and broad immunity from government regulation of its businesses. Moscow officials, in particular, have helped the church raise money for favored causes by pressuring private business to contribute.

According to Nikolai Mitrokhin, director of a research institute that studies religions in the former Soviet Union, the church built its fortune starting in the 1990s through trading in tobacco and alcohol; exporting oil and sturgeon; building shopping malls and hotels; and operating jewelry stores. The church also runs book publishing concerns and organic farms.

Church spokesman Father Vsevolod Chaplin confirmed that the Patriarchate controlled many business operations. But he said the tobacco and oil businesses were not profitable and that the church isn't involved in them now. He also dismissed the notion that the church's commercial deals had undermined its spiritual mission.

"I don't see anything detrimental if the church can invest in this kind of work," he said.

The Patriarchate does not make its financial reports public, but Mitrokhin estimates the Orthodox Church's annual income at several billion dollars.

This secrecy has led to allegations -- denied by the church -- that it has engaged in money laundering. "All of their financial streams flow in the dark," said Sergei Filatov, a scholar of religion at Moscow State University.

Today, the church says nearly half of its income comes from the four-star Danilovsky hotel in Moscow, located 5 miles south of the Kremlin, and a factory outside the capital that produces icons and other religious items.

"We still have to rebuild what Communist iconoclasts destroyed," said Father Vitaly, 51, a priest from the central city of Vladimir. "Funds won't fly down from the sky."