In 1918 BISHOP PLATON OF TALLINN encouraged his flock to cooperate with the underground government of independent Estonia rather than with the German occupation authorities or the Russian Bolsheviks. Murdered by pro-Bolshevik Estonians, he is now revered as a martyr by Estonian Orthodox Christians. On 24 February 1996, a semi-circle of Greek, Finnish, Estonian and Russian clergymen gathered around Bishop Platon's ornate tomb in Tallinn's Church of the Transfiguration for a short memorial service. A few minutes earlier they had defied the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow by formally proclaiming the restoration of the Patriarchate of Constantinople's jurisdiction over the Estonian Orthodox Church.
Not long ago the Moscow Patriarchate's hold on the Estonian church seemed unbreakable. Constantinople's jurisdiction had begun only after Platon's death--and after two centuries in which Estonia had been part of the Russian Empire. The Soviet occupation of the 1940s brought the Estonian Orthodox back under Moscow's control, except for a handful of parishes which managed to establish themselves abroad as the Stockholm-based 'Estonian Church in Exile.' During the years of East-West detente, in 1978, Constantinople suspended even its formal claim to spiritual leadership of the increasingly Russified parishes within Estonia. By the 1980s even the parishes in exile were in decline as larger Orthodox jurisdictions or Western secular culture absorbed the grandchildren of the tiny Estonian diaspora .
What brought the independent Estonian Orthodox Church back from the brink of extinction was the imagination and tenacity of a church historian and an economist who had lived their entire lives under Soviet occupation within Estonia. These two men, who initially met in a karate class, combined historical and legal research to revive the memory of an indigenous Estonian Orthodox tradition. They crafted a strategy for grafting the most militantly anti-Moscow Estonian parishes back onto what they regarded as the sole legitimate heir of that tradition, the 'Stockholm Synod' of the church in exile. They developed an effective alliance with the newly independent Estonian state's Ministry of the Interior, creating a legal mechanism for having their parishes formally recognised as the sole lawful heirs of all property owned by the Estonian Orthodox Church before 1940. They gradually persuaded a majority of Estonia's parishes to join them; they successfully wooed an initially cautious PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE; and they finally saw their vision realised in Tallinn's Church of the Transfiguration on 24 February, when the visiting Greek bishops installed ARCHBISHOP JOHN OF FINLAND as acting head of the Estonian parishes returning to Constantinople's jurisdiction.
AIVAR SARAPIK, now deacon at the Transfiguration parish, was a spiritual seeker in the 1980s as were many students in the Soviet Union. He was baptised into Orthodox Christianity in 1984, when he was still a computer-engineering student, after a spiritual odyssey that had taken him through Far Eastern religion. By 1991, he told Keston News Service, he was director of youth programmes for the Estonian diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church; as such he had written authorisation from the new PATRIARCH OF MOSCOW (and former Archbishop of Tallinn) ALEKSI II to represent the church in ecumenical gatherings. At the 1991 gathering of the World Council of Churches in Canberra, Australia, he was one of 20 people in the delegation from the Russian Orthodox Church.
The young Estonian approached one of the representatives of the delegation from the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople and launched what became a two-hour conversation about various issues, including the possibility of restoring Constantinople's pre-1940 jurisdiction over the Estonian Orthodox. The Greek bishop was non-committal, but clearly Sarapik had planted a seed. That same year Sarapik and his friend HENN TOSSO, a Tallinn economist, began publishing articles in Estonia on this theme; in the fateful month of August 1991, they created an independent foundation to pursue ties with the 'Stockholm Synod.'
Tosso, two decades older than Sarapik and a lifelong Orthodox Christian, eventually was delegated formal authority by the exile group in Stockholm to act on its behalf within Estonia. His tiny office on Kaarli Street was a shabby contrast to pro-Moscow ARCHBISHOP KORNILI's spacious headquarters in the heart of Tallinn's historic Old Town, but had two potent symbols on the wall--an icon and a map showing every Orthodox parish in the country. The two activists lobbied these parishes one by one, asking them to express publicly their desire to affiliate with the 'Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church'--the historic name of the pre-1940 structure under Constantinople's jurisdiction.
The pro-Constantinople group won a key ally in the person of MARI-ANNE HELJAS, legal specialist for the small board of religious affairs in Estonia's Ministry of the Interior. When they first met, recalled Tosso in a 20 February interview with KNS, they disagreed: She thought that the charter of the pro-Moscow jurisdiction in Estonia was too centralised and hierarchical, while he at first defended it. Eventually he came to accept her view. She encouraged the pro-Constantinople group to move quickly in registering itself with her Ministry in 1993--unlike some of her senior colleagues who, Tosso told KNS, 'were afraid--they didn't want to offend the Russians.'
Mrs Heljas told KNS on 15 February that registration is not necessary for a religious group to function in Estonia, but that it is important for financial issues such as the privatisation of state property. If a religious group claims to be the continuation of a church which existed and which owned property in independent Estonia before 1940, then it must register in order to have the state recognise its claims in the process of returning nationalised land and buildings to their pre-Soviet owners. In the eyes of the law, she said, Archbishop Kornili and his pro-Moscow diocese 'cannot lose anything because the churches were never theirs to begin with'; they were stolen by force under the Soviet occupation. In spite of that, she said, the state will not forcibly evict pro-Moscow priests and congregations from the churches which they occupy 'because we realise that there is a Russian Orthodox Church with Russian Orthodox believers here.'
When Archbishop Kornili sought to have his diocese registered by the Ministry of the Interior under the historic name of the 'Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church'--a name which the pro-Moscow diocese had not used during the Soviet period--Mrs Heljas and her colleagues rejected their application on the grounds that this name had already been taken by the pro- Constantinople parishes represented by Tosso and Sarapik. She invited the Archbishop to seek registration under another name--which would mean forsaking all claim to pre-1940 properties, including Kornili's own office down the block from that of Mrs Heljas. Archbishop Kornili refused.
If Archbishop Kornili had presented his application before Tosso and Sarapik did, asked KNS, would Mrs Heljas have granted it? Yes, she said--but her Ministry still would not have given him legal title to the pre-1940 church properties. 'I can legally change my name to Rockefeller,' she said, 'but that doesn't entitle me to inherit the Rockefellers' money.'
The pro-Moscow jurisdiction accused Mrs Heljas of breaking Estonia's 1993 law on church-state relations to suit her own ecclesiastical and political preferences. Archbishop Kornili's spokesmen cited passages in the law which require a church registered in Estonia to have an 'episcopal structure' and an 'administration' located within the country. The Stockholm-based exile church, they said, was functioning without either. Mrs Heljas replied that the charter filed with her office by the pro-Constantinople jurisdiction clearly included both, and that it is the words of the charter that her office must consider. The pro-Moscow diocese filed suit in a Tallinn court against the Ministry of the Interior, seeking to have Mrs Heljas' ruling overturned, but the court ruled in favour of the Ministry. The diocese appealed to a higher court--again without success. (NOTE: Both the court rulings, along with the text of the 1993 law, are available in English translation from the Keston Institute.)
Sarapik told KNS that the pro-Constantinople jurisdiction does not dispute the pro- Moscow jurisdiction's legal title to a controversial church in Maardu, right next to a monument to the Soviet Army, since this building was erected only three years ago and was never owned by the pre-1940 Estonian church. That is not enough, said Archbishop Kornili's office. (END)
Anyone who thinks that the church crisis in Estonia is simply an ecclesiastical version of ethnic politics should visit Tartu. Centre of what is sometimes called 'the real Estonia'--the forests and farmlands where Slavic immigrants from the Soviet period are heavily outnumbered by ethnic Estonians who are now forgetting the Russian language which was force-fed to them as schoolchildren--Tartu is the home of the country's 17th-century university and of several Orthodox churches. The largest of these, with an almost entirely Russian congregation under ethnic Russian priest Simeon Kruzhkov, is now defecting to the newly revived Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church under the Patriarch of Constantinople. But the purely Estonian congregation of ethnic Estonian priest Aleksandr Aim is staying loyal to the Patriarch of Moscow.
Estonia is the only one of the three Baltic republics in which 'Orthodox' does not in effect mean 'Russian.' In the 19th century the majority of Orthodox Christians here were ethnic Estonians; the country's last president before the Soviet occupation was a practising Orthodox whose brother was an Orthodox priest. But the Orthodox have always been heavily outnumbered by the Lutherans; before 1940 Estonia had only 156 Orthodox parishes, nearly half of which were closed by Stalin and Khrushchev. In a country where the remotest town is only a few hours' drive from the capital, all the Orthodox priests know each other well. As they take sides in the current confrontation, their personal relationships sometimes count for more than ethnic ties or political views. Some have tried to keep a foot in both camps, finally deciding on the basis of what they say is best for their parishes--or, their critics say, what is best for themselves.
As of late February, just before Constantinople unilaterally revived its Estonian jurisdiction, 54 of the country's current 84 parishes had expressed their desire to align themselves with Constantinople. But those 54 parishes were being served by only 11 priests, not all of whom were firmly pro-Constantinople even if they wanted independence from Moscow. Pro-Moscow priest Yuvenaly Karma, an ethnic Estonian, told KNS on 17 February that many of the pro- Constantinople, parishes are just barely alive, with services only once every few weeks and one priest serving several different parishes. Pro- Constantinople Deacon Aivar Sarapik conceded this point, but said that the numbers of ethnic Estonian Orthodox had been artificially lowered by policies of deliberate Russification during and even after the Soviet period: While rejecting Estonian candidates for ordination, Moscow brought in Russian priests who had never even lived in Estonia. As a result, he said, the country now has only 17 priests who are even capable of conducting the Orthodox Liturgy in the Estonian language.
Of the first 34 parishes to sign up with the revived structure under Constantinople, two use only Church Slavonic in worship. One of those two is Fr Simeon's Church of the Assumption in Tartu, which KNS visited on 21 February. Fr Simeon is a good example of the principle that everyone in Estonian Orthodoxy knows everyone else. He studied at the seminary in Leningrad with Archbishop Kornili of Tallinn; Kornili's predecessor Aleksi, now Patriarch of Moscow, is godfather to his son.
When asked why he had chosen to support Constantinople, Fr Simeon said that the interests of his own parish had weighed heavily. A few years ago the parish recovered an adjoining hall which had originally been church property before being confiscated during the soviet period. But in 1993 Fr Simeon received a letter from an Estonian court, warning that his parish was occupying the newly returned building illegally because the parish was not part of a legally registered national church. (Shortly earlier, Estonia's Ministry of the Interior had registered the pro-Constantinople 'Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church' as the sole lawful heir to pre-1940 church properties.) In consultation with his parishioners, the priest decided to re-register the parish as part of the pro-Constantinople structure under secular law--but to remain canonically under the jurisdiction of Archbishop Kornili and Moscow.
Archbishop Kornili's responded to this act of semi-rebellion by formally banning Fr Simeon from functioning as a priest. The two then met to discuss the problem, and Fr Simeon agreed to give Archbishop Kornili a written statement declaring that he still considered himself to be under the canonical jurisdiction of Moscow. The Archbishop then lifted the ban and even visited the Tartu parish to conduct a Liturgy there with Fr Simeon--even though the parish was still legally registered with the pro-Constantinople jurisdiction.
Fr Simeon and his parish continued this dual status--canonically under one jurisdiction, legally under another--and continued to enjoy normal relations with the Archbishop even after the priest visited Helsinki with pro-Constantinople clergy in 1995 for a meeting with the Patriarch of Constantinople. The final straw was Fr Simeon's participation in a meeting, also with pro-Constantinople clergy, to discuss church issues with the President of Estonia in the fall of 1995. In January 1996 Archbishop Kornili formally banned Fr Simeon for the second time, and on 24 February the priest finally came out definitively on Constantinople's side by participating in the church service in Tallinn which installed Archbishop John of Finland as locum tenens of the pro-Constantinople jurisdiction.
Fr Simeon told KNS that hardly any of his ethnic-Russian flock had left the parish because of his transfer to Constantinople; he said that as long as worship services are conducted in the familiar Old Church Slavonic, his fellow Russians don't care about the jurisdictional issue. His pro-Moscow neighbor, Fr Aleksandr Aim, agreed: He told KNS on 20 February that 'the language question decides everything: If I were to use more than one or two phrases in Slavonic, my Estonians would leave.' But for himself, as for his fellow Estonian Fr Yuvenaly Karma, what counts most is not language but a priest's institutional and personal loyalty to his bishop. Unlike the pro-Constantinople Estonian priests or the pro-Moscow Russian priests whom KNS interviewed, Fr Aleksandr and Fr Yuvenaly showed no interest in the ethnic and political issues; to them, a priest's duty of obedience to his bishop overrides everything else--especially if that bishop is the one who ordained him, his personal link to the Apostles. 'I could never abandon the bishop who ordained me unless he fell into heresy,' said Fr Yuvenaly passionately.
Unlike Fr Simeon or Fr Aleksandr, Fr Yuvenaly has an ethnically mixed parish--and has not succeeded in holding it together. Located in Haapsalu on Estonia's west coast, his Church of St Mary Magdalene used to have a slight Russian majority. A parish meeting voted against joining the pro-Constantinople group, with most of the Estonians voting for Constantinople and most of the Russians for Moscow. As soon as they lost this vote, nearly all the Estonians left, including the choir director and other lay leaders--leaving the Estonian priest with an almost entirely Russian congregation.
Fr Yuvenaly also conducts the Liturgy once a week in Estonian in Tallinn's Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral, the stronghold of Archbishop Kornili's pro-Moscow group. A few minutes' walk downhill in the heart of Tallinn's medieval Old Town is Fr Emmanuel Kirss's militantly pro- Constantinople Church of the Transfiguration. When KNS attended the Estonian-language services in both churches on the weekend of 17-18 February, the pro-Moscow one drew about a dozen worshippers, the pro- Constantinople one more than a hundred. (END)
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