The domestic and exiled branches of the Russian Orthodox Church formally reunited here today in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin to end an 80-year split over communism.
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, and the leader of the church's branch in exile, Metropolitan Lavr, signed the reunification agreement during an elaborate ceremony at Moscow's largest cathedral.
"By this Act, canonical communion within the Local Russian Orthodox Church is hereby restored," the act read, according to a transcript published on the web site of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
PHOTO: AFP
Dozens of bearded priests flanked Alexy II, dressed in flowing green robes,and Lavr dressed in blue as they signed the act and embraced.
Putin then stepped forward to accept Alexy's congratulations for his "service to the faith and country."
The Russian leader, a former KGB officer who has since publicly embraced Christianity, said the reunification was a moment of rebirth for the country.
"The national lifting and development of Russia is impossible without the support of the historical and spiritual experience of our people," Putin said in remarks broadcast on state-run television.
At the culmination of the service the once rival church leaders were due to take communion from the same chalice in a gesture to seal the spiritual reunification.
The agreement, which became possible following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, welcomes almost half a million believers back into the Moscow-led fold and ends decades of recriminations over collaboration with the Bolshevik regime.
The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia was formed by clergy who fled the atheist Bolshevik Revolution and split with the Moscow patriarchate after its 1927 declaration of submission to the Soviet authorities.
After decades of acrimony, contacts between the Churches were officially renewed in 2003, with the two agreeing to call the 1927 declaration "a tragic compromise."
The reunification is an important symbolic victory for Putin, who regards the Orthodox Church as a key pillar of post-Soviet Russian society and has prioritized the promotion of Russian culture abroad.
The deal was sealed last year when 150 delegates from North and South America, Australia, Europe and ex-Soviet republics voted in favor at the conference in San Francisco.
However, some elements of the emigre clergy remain against the move, suspecting that some Orthodox priests who also served during the Soviet regime of collaborating with the KGB secret service.
In Moscow the merger was seen as a historic reunion, with a long line of the local faithful queuing outside in the rain at dawn to celebrate.
"We must all rejoice in this reunification, because the Orthodox people must be together," said Svetlana Novolodskaya, a 47-year-old nursery teacher.
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