Brothers and Sisters, my beloved children in Christ,
For ten years, I have been keeping my ears and my heart open to your messages of pain, to your problems and to your anxieties, trying along with my prayers to do the best I can on all of these. However, today your spiritual father feels that he is the one in need of sharing with you his own personal pain and of asking for your prayer.
I want you to know that my love for the Russian people and for the Orthodox Church in Russia started taking a central place in my heart already from the years as a University student, when we were hearing about the bitter persecutions that Stalin had launched against the Church, especially during the last phase of his life. We, certainly, were shocked by the news we were receiving those days. So much so, that at the Student Hostel where we were living, fellow students and friends, we had decided that at every morning prayer session we should introduce special prayers to God for the Christians of Russia who were under persecution.
Later, as Chancellor of the Holy Archdiocese of Athens, I became particularly moved at the visit of the late Patriarch of Moscow, Poimen, who also gave me as present a cross worn at breast, which I am still wearing when I am celebrating the liturgy in Attaleia and Alanya. Later on, the late Patriarch of Moscow Alexios II of blessed memory gave me also as present a cross and a bishop’s icon of the Theotokos worn at breast. I am keeping these as holy treasures. I feel them as being an exhortation for me to remain standing, spiritually, by the Russian Orthodox brethren.
With this kind of preparation, my soul bounced with joy when, from 1992 and after, I was seeing coming in Seoul to our church more and more brothers and sisters from Russia and the other countries of the former Soviet Union following its disintegration. With those earliest ones we started in 1992 celebrating the Divine Liturgy in Slavonic, forming also a choir and printing texts of the holy Services and of the Divine Liturgy. During his first visit to Korea, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew also laid the foundations of a special holy church in Seoul in honor of St. Maximus the Greek so that the holy Services and the Divine Liturgy be celebrated uninterruptedly, in Slavonic, for the sake of those speaking the language and the number of whom was getting larger and larger. We also brought an icon painter from Russia to execute the iconographic decoration of the church, who painted icons of Saints dear to the Russians. He put in place the Iconostasis, which was from Saint Petersburg with icons in Russian art. Also all the holy utensils used in the holy services came from Russia. This way, entering the church our Russian brethren are feeling that they are within a familiar environment.
However, I felt particularly hurt when, and in spite of all the things we had done for our Russian brethren, the Protestant Secretary of the Korean National Council of Churches, some 20 years ago, brought to me one day a letter coming from the Head of the Department of External Affairs of the Patriarchate of Moscow, in which the Protestant Churches of Korea were asked to make a donation of 500,000 US dollars for … the construction of a Russian church in Seoul! The Korean Secretary was startled when I informed him that we do have, already, a church specifically for the Russian-speaking people, which serves fully the believers coming from Russia. Who knows what an opinion my visitor would have allowed to be formed in his mind about the writer of the Russian letter, if he knew that the Holy Canons of Ecumenical Councils forbid, with severe penalties, a Bishop to construct a church in the Diocese of another Bishop! This gesture was for me the first blow that my heart had felt from the hand of someone coming from the same faith!
The unfortunate things is that there have been more such blows, like ordination of a Korean by a Russian Metropolitan, acts of other holy Services which have been performed by him in Seoul without giving notification to the Metropolitan of Korea etc. I also felt a deep hurt when a Church, constructed by me in Solo, Indonesia, was taken by a Russian Metropolitan who for ten and more years now does not permit us to celebrate services in there. This is the Church of the Holy Trinity. Pains like these have repeated themselves!
In spite of all these, my love for the Russians has not diminished.
Ten years ago, I submitted my resignation, for health reasons, to the Ecumenical Patriarch from the position as Metropolitan of Korea, so that to withdraw to our Monastery outside Seoul. The Holy Synod accepted my resignation and bestowed upon me the honorary title of Metropolitan of Pisidia-Attaleia-Sides. This Metropolitan see has remained without a Christian population since 1922 for reasons widely known. This meant that I would not have anything to do in this deserted Metropolis and thus would be able to find rest during the last years of my life in my Monastery.
During those days, however, the Patriarch of Moscow, Alexius II, of blessed memory, had sent a letter to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew informing him that some 6,000 Russians had established themselves in Attaleia; thence asking him to take upon him the pastoral care of these people, since they were in an area under the Canonical jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. When the Patriarch handed the letter for me to read it, I saw for a moment my plans for an easy life of retirement collapsing. My deep love, however, for the Orthodox Russians who were looking for a better life after 70 years of persecution and hardship, made me say yes to the Patriarch and take, with His blessing, upon me this mission. With the grace of God, the struggle for holy churches, priests and everything else needed for the spiritual and liturgical provisions for those who had established themselves in the Province of Attaleia Orthodox faithful, began.
My beloved children, all of you know about the agonies and the efforts, on the part of all of us at that time, to find a church in Attaleia, to pay for it (and very dearly at that) 500,000 Euros, even though it was in ruins; then to restore it, decorate and furnish it so that to have it ready for the official Opening of the Gates ceremony in September 2011. All of you also know that a similar struggle was undertaken so that you may have a place of worship in Alanya. The total amount we raised in order to cover the previously mentioned as well as other needs was, according to the official reports of the decade, 1.556.406 Euros. If you consider also that these works were undertaken during a period of economic crisis, which we all are experiencing, you can imagine the tremendous difficulties we faced in order to secure this huge financial amount. How many were those Greeks who were offering from what they did not have, in order to help their Russian brethren, those with no liturgy service for years, to have churches where to worship and receive communion.
And here is the other deep pain! When, with God’s blessing, everything had been organized, all of you had your own holy churches available, your own permanent priests to serve you and offer to you sanctification through the Holy Sacraments, there came, “a bolt from the blue”, the recent, known to all decision of the Minsk Synod: the Attaleian Churches are schismatic, as they are all other Orthodox Churches under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople!
Thence, according to the decree of the Russian Synod, the Bishop and the Priests in Attaleia and Alanya, who undertook your pastoral care after the invitation of Patriarch Alexius II of Moscow, of a blessed memory, are also … schismatic!
You can understand the unbearable pain that has caused me this offense coming from hierarchs of the same faith from my beloved Patriarchate of Moscow. This is an additional pain as the situation is stirring uneasiness and turmoil among some of you, with very sad consequences. Two recent examples:
- A mother in Alanya had, with the consent of her husband of another faith, arranged to baptize her child in our Church. She heard of the Minsk decision, referred to a known to her priest in Russia, who forbade her to perform the baptism in the “schismatic”, according to him, Orthodox Church in Alanya. After that the mother decided to leave her child with no baptism!
- One other case. A Russia woman dies. Her relatives ask a priest in Russia as to what to do. He forbade them from calling the Orthodox priest in Attaleia to perform the funeral service. The result: they buried her as if she had never been baptized!
One wonders whether the hierarchs, who have taken upon them the responsibility of the salvation of souls “for whom Christ died”, have ever considered what would be the sad consequences of the decision they have made and the turmoil that this decision would cause to the Orthodox world!
It is for this reason, my children, that my pain is further intensified, because also of the spiritual damage that the members of the Russian Synod of Minsk have caused to themselves. Unless they become aware of their mistake, they make themselves accountable to the Righteous Judge: a) for the spiritual damage they are causing to the Orthodox faithful around the world whom, as it appears, they did not take into consideration at all; b) for the defamation of the Orthodox Church in the eyes of non-Christians and heterodox; c) for the schism they are causing to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church; d) for the thanklessness and animosity towards the martyr Church of Constantinople, the proclaimed worthy throughout the centuries Ecumenical Patriarchate, from which the Russian nation received the light of the Gospel and was reborn.
This is what, after all, His Beatitude Patriarch of Moscow and of all Russia Cyril acknowledged when on July 4th 2009, addressing the All-Holy Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, was saying: “We must not forget that the Church of Russia is related with special bonds of relationship with the first in the order of the Diptychs Patriarchal Throne of Constantinople. It is from this that we have received the light of faith and the principles of the intellectual knowledge, the art of building churches and the iconography, the liturgy and the variety of the entire ecclesiastical structure.” May God enlighten and strengthen His Beatitude Patriarch Cyril of Moscow to remain steadfast now to what he was writing on February 9th 2009 to the Ecumenical Patriarch: “Your Holiness, … we shall make every effort so that the beauty and the glory of Orthodoxy continue becoming manifest in harmony and unity.”
To this end, my beloved brothers, sisters and children, I am asking you, all of us together, to form a praying camp; not only in our common worship gatherings in our holy churches, but daily, that each one of us pray ardently for this great problem that is shaking the Orthodox Church today. Let us be turning with faith towards the Head of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who before His crucifixion was asking His Father to secure the unity of all those who would believe in Him, “that they may be one just as We are one.” Let us also ask Him fervently to stop the schisms within the Church; to bring peace and unity to the entire Orthodox Church, in order that which the holy Angels were singing on the Night of Christmas may become a reality: “Peace on earth, good will among people”!
With warm paternal wishes
+ The Metropolitan of Pisidia Sotirios