Church Dispute Worries Yeltsin

      TALLINN, March 1 (Reuter) - Russian President Boris Yeltsin has
intervened in a dispute within the Orthdox Church in Estonia which threatens
the worldwide Orthodox community with schism, officials said on Friday.

    A spokesman for Russia's embassy in Tallinn said Yeltsin had sent a
letter to Estonian President Lennart Meri in which he ``expressed the
deepest concern, both of our compatriots in Estonia and of the Russian side,
over the situation that has developed over the Orthodox Church in Estonia.''

    The row began after the Constantinople Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox
Church based in Istanbul took the Estonian Orthodox Church back under its
wing.

    The church had been under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox
Moscow Patriarchate since the former Soviet Union annexed Estonia in 1940.

    But a majority of mainly Estonian-speaking Orthodox believers said they
wanted to return to the jurisdiction of the Constantinople wing and its
leader, All Holiness Bartolomeus 1.

    The Russian Orthodox Church in Estonia bitterly resented the decision
and has suspended relations with Constantinople and its Finnish branch,
threatening a schism in the 300-million strong Orthodox faith.

    ``We want to avoid an open conflict between believers on the basis of
property disputes,'' the Russian embassy spokesman, Andrei Yakushev, quoted
Yeltsin as adding in his letter.

    The row in Estonia also centred on valuable church property, which has
been handed over to the Estonian Orthodox Church since it was recognised as
the legal successor of the pre-World War Two Orthodox church in Estonia.

    Meri's office, which received the Yeltsin letter on Thursday, denied
media reports that members of the Moscow-affiliated church would be denied
the chance to practise their faith. ``Estonia's churches, mosques and
temples are open and will be open to all believers,'' it said.

10:40 03-01-96