According to topb2bwebsites, Russian Orthodox Church, actually Russian Orthodox Church, abbreviation ROK, the autocephalous Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate; its head bears the title “Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia”. The seat of the Patriarch is Moscow; liturgical language Church Slavonic. For theological training exist in the jurisdiction of the Moscow PatriarchateIn addition to the two traditional spiritual colleges of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia – the Moscow Spiritual Academy (seat in Sergijew Possad) and the Spiritual Academy Saint Petersburg – three other spiritual academies (Kiev, Minsk, Chișinău), each with more than 30 seminaries and clergy Educational institutions, an eparchial spiritual educational institution for women (Nizhny Novgorod) and a theological institute. The Russian Orthodox Church is also the sponsor of the Russian Orthodox University, which opened in Moscow in 1992. The seminary in Belgorod, which opened in 1996, is dedicated to the training of missionaries. The number of people (believers) who know that they are connected to the Russian Orthodox Church varies widely today with around 120–164 million worldwide, for Russia mostly with 85–100 million. (According to other calculations with over 113 million) stated, Orthodox publications often give even higher numbers. This makes the Russian Orthodox Church the largest orthodox national church. Patriarch has been Kirill I since February 1, 2009 as the successor to Alexi II, who died in December 2008 .
According to legend, the apostle Andrew is the first Christian missionary in the area of the later Rus, where Christian communities arose very early in the Greek settlements around the Black Sea. However, the actual Christianization of the East Slavic peoples did not begin until the 10th century after the Kiev Grand Duke Vladimir I. received baptism (988) and declared Christianity the state religion of his empire. The Kiev metropolis has been under the Ecumenical Patriarchate since 1037 (previously probably the Bulgarian Patriarchate of Ohrid) and was mostly led by Greek bishops until 1448. After the establishment of Mongolian rule over the Russian principalities (destruction of Kiev in 1240), Vladimir became the residence of the Kiev metropolitan (1299) until the transfer of the Kiev metropolitan seat to Moscow in 1325 (finally 1354), which became the center of the Russian Church. As the metropolis of Moscow and all of Russia, it formally declared its autocephaly in 1459, which the Ecumenical Patriarchate did not change until 1589 with that of Patriarch Jeremias II. completed elevation of the Russian Church to the Moscow Patriarchate. The new ecclesiastical self-confidence was reflected in the ideology of Moscow as the Third Rome, according to which the Moscow rulers, after the fall of the Byzantine Empire (1453), claimed the office of protector of the Orthodox faith and protector of all Orthodox Christians. The church development from the 15th to the 17th century was essentially determined by the church-critical movement of the Judaizers, the Brest Union in the Ukraine (1595/96) and the church disputes over the reforms of the Patriarch Nikon, which led to the secession of the Raskolniki resulted in a schism (Raskol). Peter the Great took advantage of the weakening of the patriarch’s power and abolished the patriarchal office in 1721. Until its restoration by the regional council after the February Revolution in 1917, the Russian Orthodox Church was governed by the Holy Synod, a collective body under the control of a secular official, the chief procurator. After the October Revolution, W. I. Lenin decreed the separation of church and state (1918). The church lost the rights of a legal person, v. a. the right to own property. The “Law on Religious Associations” of 1929 limited their activities to the execution of worship in the church buildings made available by the state. Immediately after the October Revolution, bloody persecutions of clergymen and believers began, which continued until 1940 in numerous arrests, repression and state-organized anti-church propaganda (godless movement) found. Only the situation that arose with the German attack on the USSR in World War II brought about a reorientation of the state church policy, since the Russian Orthodox Church saw its own duty in supporting the troops fighting for the liberation of the “holy Russian earth”. Some repression ceased, and in 1943 the election of a new patriarch was permitted. After the Second World War, the state supported the forced integration of the Ukrainian Catholic Church into the Russian Orthodox Church in western Ukraine, which had become part of the USSR. After fluctuations in state church policy in the period that followed, the 1,000th anniversary of the Russian Orthodox Church (1988), which received a lot of international attention, led to a lasting relaxation of the relationship between church and state. In today’s Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church, whose “special contribution to the construction of the Russian state and to the development of the spirit and culture of Russia” expressly emphasizes the preamble to the “Religious Law of the Russian Federation” (1997), has largely its traditional position regained in society. After 1990 she got back large parts of her property; In addition to church activity in the narrower sense, it now develops extensive educational work and journalistic activity.
From the perspective of the Russian Orthodox Church, one of the main problems is the church developments in Ukraine since 1990 (Ukrainian churches). The relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church abroad has been characterized by official talks since 2003 with the aim of restoring church unity after the first »attempts at rapprochement« in the 1990s. On May 17, 2007, the two churches were reunified in Moscow, the formal basis of which is the “Act of Canonical Communion” signed on that day by the two church leaders, Patriarch Alexi II and Metropolitan Lawer. – More on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church between 1917 and 1990: Karlowitz Synod; Soviet Union (religion); Tikhon, Sergi, Alexi, Pimen Kirill(Patriarchs of Moscow and All Russia).
