U.S.A. DOES NOT DRAW LINE BETWEEN RUSSIAN CHURCH AND RUSSIAN STATE
by Aleksei Markarkin
Telegram Bunin & Co, 29 September 2018
Reports that have appeared about the refusal of an American visa to the administrator of patriarchal parishes in America, Bishop of Naro-Fominsk Ioann, may become a sign of a much more serious phenomenon than even the refusal of a Greek visa to Metropolitan of St. Peterburg Varsonofey, who was trying to visit Mt. Athos. Despite the fact that in the church hierarchy, Varsonofey stands substantially higher than Ioann.
The point is that Varsonofey requested a visa as a pilgrim, that is, a tourist visa. But Ioann is ministering continually in the U.S.A., administering the structure of the Moscow patriarchate. That is, the parishes that did not join the Orthodox Church in America, to which the RPTs in 1970 granted autocephaly, without asking Constantinople's permission.
Something similar happened only in the period of the Cold War, when under President Eisenhower the exarch of the Moscow patriarchate, Archbishop Boris, was deported from the U.S.A., charged with cooperating with soviet special services (which corresponded to the truth). However, when Soviet-American relations warmed up, Archbishop Boris was allowed to visit his flock. The current story may be evidence of a new cold war in that the U.S.A., like in soviet times, does not draw a line between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state. And it considers the former an extension of the latter. (tr. by PDS, posted 29 September 2018)
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