Victory for A Dark Horse

By Richard N. Ostling

The Pope may no longer be an Italian, but it goes without saying that the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia must be a Russian. Until last week, that is, when yet another unbreakable rule was broken in the Soviet Union. At the resplendently gilded Trinity-St. Sergius monastery in Zagorsk, ceremonial bells and chimes greeted the election of an Estonian of German stock, Metropolitan Aleksy of Leningrad, as the next Patriarch. It is the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution that the Russian Orthodox Church has chosen its leader free of manipulation by the atheistic regime.

The new Patriarch draws immediate authority and credibility from his election by a 330-member Local Council with a bishop, priest and lay delegate representing each of the nation's dioceses. Aleksy will reign over a flock of some 50 million members (in contrast to 19 million Communists). As Mikhail Gorbachev fully recognizes, Orthodoxy could provide a unique source of continuity, stability and morality amid escalating Soviet turmoil. Enthroned at age 61 with life tenure, Patriarch Aleksy is quite likely to be a national leader long after Gorbachev leaves power.

Amazingly, there was no ethnic Russian in the race at all. Aleksy's two competitors, Metropolitans Vladimir of Rostov and Filaret of Kiev, are both natives of the Ukraine. The three nominees were elected by the Soviet Union's bishops from a list of all 75 of their eligible colleagues, then proposed to the full church council. The council rejected bids to add other candidates, then chose Aleksy in two secret ballots.

Vladimir, who ranked second in the bishops' nominations, followed Aleksy as administrator at patriarchal headquarters in Moscow and shares his moderate views. But it was highly significant that the delegates bypassed Filaret, a hard-liner who had served as acting head of the church since the death last month of Patriarch Pimen. Leader of the Kiev diocese since 1966, Filaret is more of a Ukrainian chauvinist than is Vladimir and, according to dissident priest Gleb Yakunin, is seen as "a KGB puppet." He was third in the bishops' vote.

Aleksy, like all bishops who emerged during the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period, had to bite his lip and say nothing about the constant persecution of the church, but he managed to avoid outright dishonesty. A pre-election article by Aleksy in a church journal mingled traditional views with support of Gorbachev's reforms and ecological activism. In a sermon last month at the Valaam monastery, Aleksy eloquently lamented communism's mass murder of clergy and destruction of churches.

The failure of Filaret to win election came as a relief both within and outside the Russian Orthodox Church. He displayed his conservative, stand-fast views before the election in a newspaper interview, contending that "it's naive to expect revolutionary changes in the church in comparison to those which took place after the election of Gorbachev." Moreover, notes Jane Ellis of England's Keston College, Filaret's election would have sent "the strongest possible anti-Catholic signal to the Vatican" just six months after Gorbachev visited the Pope. The Kiev prelate's hostility to Rome has greatly complicated the bitter fight in the western Ukraine over Catholics' seizing churches that Stalin handed to the Orthodox in 1946.

The widely traveled Aleksy, in contrast, is a committed ecumenist who for 22 years served as president of the Conference of European Churches, a continent- wide Orthodox and Protestant body. A priest's son who was born in independent Estonia, he was eleven when the Soviets moved in. In 1961, only eleven years after entering the priesthood, he became the bishop of Tallinn, Estonia's capital, and retained that post after he was named to head the powerful Leningrad see in 1986.

Aleksy entered the political arena last year when he was one of three Orthodox prelates appointed to the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies. One of his first speeches there stated that "the most beautiful social ideas cannot be achieved by applying force and ignoring human morals, human conscience, human intelligence, moral choice and inner freedom." Nonetheless, it seemed highly unlikely that a Baltic native would be chosen to lead the church at a time when Russian nationalism is running high and Estonia is seeking secession from the Soviet Union.

Aleksy takes the helm at a time of religious toleration, increasing Orthodox church attendance and renovation of thousands of exquisite onion-domed churches. Full guarantees of the church's right to religious education and charitable activity, however, depend upon parliament's passage of the religious-freedom bill, a draft of which was published last week. Partly because Patriarch Pimen had been in failing health for years, the church's top leadership was slow to respond to the new opportunities under Gorbachev. "Perestroika has not yet begun in the church. But the moment has come," says the Rev. Paul Crow, ecumenical chief of America's Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). "The window of opportunity for the church is right now."

"It is difficult to imagine the volume of work awaiting the new Patriarch," observes Archbishop Kirill, chairman of Russian Orthodoxy's ecumenical department and, at 44, a probable future candidate for the top job. He predicts that the new Patriarch's rule will be "very difficult," similar to that of Patriarch Tikhon after the 1917 Revolution. The Russian people are looking to the church for answers, says Kirill, but "they forget that the % church has been tremendously weakened. The church must have time to be renewed, and the people do not want to wait. There is no time." Among the church's most pressing needs, he cites reconciliation among factions, democratic reorganization of Orthodoxy, restoration of normal activities in local parishes and the upgrading of priestly training.

The urgency of the situation was underscored by the decision to hold the patriarchal election a mere five weeks after Pimen died. While last week's electors voted against a leader too strongly identified with the past, they chose not a declared reformer but a seasoned administrative insider who seems capable of riding the rough political rapids of the coming years. As part of Patriarch Pimen's inner circle, Aleksy long lived in an atmosphere of caution and compromise. He will now need to surmount the habits of a lifetime to exert the bold leadership that the times require.

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Moscow, with other bureaus