The end of last week marked the continuation of debates about figures in modern Russia who claim «spiritual authority. First and foremost, of course, is Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev, head of the de facto dominant religious organization in Putin’s Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Speaking to his flock in one of Moscow’s temples, he urged them not to believe rumors about the extravagant wealth of the ROC establishment and himself.
«When you read the most terrible things about the Patriarch, about the hierarchs, about the priests, remember that usually there is not a drop of truth in them, but everything is aimed at discrediting those who proclaim the truth of God, so that people stop listening to them and trusting them,» Kirill said.
According to him, the ROC is currently inconvenient precisely because it «speaks the truth. «Everything they say and write is usually designed to make us stop speaking the truth of God. As soon as we start saying what the powerful of this world want to hear, there will be no criticism of the church, everything will immediately disappear, and they will carry us on their hands,» he said.
At the same time, what he or his subordinates say that would be unpleasant for the powerful in Putin’s Russia remains a mystery. Especially after Schema-Hegumen Sergei Romanov, the abbot of the Sredneuralsky Monastery, was recently stripped of his priesthood shortly after he began saying such unpleasant things.
As for Kirill’s wealth, another priest who recently lost his priesthood for his outspokenness, Orthodox dissident and former deacon Andrei Kuraev, recalled the results of an investigation into the size and origin of that wealth in response to Kirill’s words. Since then, however, there have been many investigations, and thanks to them and the experience of dealing with this corporation, few today doubt its realities. And they consist in the fact that its top establishment concentrates enormous wealth in its hands in exchange for total loyalty to the authorities, and those priests who begin to criticize the government are thrown out of the church corporation because they pose a threat to its interests.
In other words, the truth is directly opposite to what Gundyaev says — it is not the mythical «powerful of this world» who gossips about his wealth for his criticism. On the contrary, his authority in society, including Orthodox society, is rapidly diminishing because he has chosen loyalty to the powerful of this world and the concentration of power and wealth in his hands over criticism, which has become the prerogative of Orthodox dissidents in the ROC.
It is interesting to look at what is happening around the ROC’s colleagues and competitors — the Spiritual Administrations of Muslims (DUMs) — from this perspective, as was written about yesterday on our website. It is quite sad to see this, because in the environment of the DUMs, Ravil Gainutdin, whose jurisdiction they are leaving in the regions today, was one of those who openly challenged the ROC leadership’s claims to dominance in the country.
However, Ravil Gainutdin’s mistake was that in competing with Patriarch Kirill, he essentially tried to be his Muslim counterpart. This manifested itself in his desire to subjugate the «Muslim clergy» to himself, similar to what his Orthodox competitor and colleague is doing. We have already written at length about why such a policy is doomed to failure. But in short, it must be understood that times are changing, and today the same Patriarch Kirill, in order to somehow restore his authority in the eyes of his flock, is forced to prove (rather unconvincingly) that he does not possess the wealth attributed to him and that he suffers for the truth. And this illustrates that in the coming era «spiritual authority» will not be possessed by the one with more parishes and wealth, but by the one who has that authority among the faithful that cannot be bought.