SMOKING IS NOT HARMING THE SOUL
Maxim Shevchenko

Nezavisimaia gazeta 18 February 1997

Revelations appearing recently in several of the news media dealing with the commercial activity of the Russian Orthodox church have forced us to turn again to this topic. Twice (on 13 November and 31 December 1996) Nezavisimaia gazeta assured its readers that on the basis of information it possesses, neither the Department of External Church Relations (OVTsS) of the Moscow patriarchate nor its leadership are involved in the acquisition, customs arrangement, transportation, and distribution or sale of tobacco and alcoholic (wine or vodka) products in order to acquire funds for humanitarian aid. Moreover, we confirmed that there are no documents in existence over the signature of the director of the OVTsS, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, that confirm that OVTsS is involved in such activity, employing for the activity his own bank account.

Recently Moscovskii komsomolets (1 Feb. 97) published an archival copy of a document, signed by the assistant director of the Staff of Humanitarian Aid under OVTsS, Archpriest Vladimir Veriga, from which it appears that the Staff is required (before a date stated in the document) "to implement the actual importation into the Russian Federation conversion of tobacco products amounting to 17,800,000 packages of cigarettes which have been approved by customs for free conversion." The document is dated 16 January 1997. We conducted our own investigation of the matter.

In the first place, it immediately became clear that the above-mentioned document really is not as sensational as it appears on first sight. Moreover it is only the LAST (actually supplementary) in a group of three documents sent to the state customs committee of Russia by the Staff on Humanitarian Aid. If one reviews all three documents as a whole (and this is what was originally suggested) then it becomes completely obvious that it is not a matter of "a swift accumulation of exchanges" of deliveries of cigarettes to Russia. Rather the contrary--obeying the order of Patriarch Alexis II to cease acquiring humanitarian aid by means of tobacco, the Staff for this aid is trying to rid itself before the customs committee of the tobacco products already received and of those contracts that were already concluded at the time of the order of the most holy patriarch.

It is obvious that it is one thing to give an order, but simply to dispose of multimillion contracts in this way, absorbing such an enormous forfeiture, is impossible. Moreover, today the Moscow patriarchate is in an extremely complex position; the customs warehouses have the delivered and so-far undelivered tobacco products, for which either the duty must be paid (which, properly, the Staff is trying to do) for import into the territory of the Russian federation or enormous fines for storage and nonremoval from the warehouses.

But the main point of the burning scandal is nevertheless the accusation against OVTsS and its leadership. Here is what NGhas managed to clarify: it is fully confirmed that OVTsS has no connection with the delivery, payment, and receipt of the profits from humanitarian aid.

In order to understand that it could not have this connection even in principle it is necessary to visualize the structure of the mutual relations of deparments of the Moscow patriarchate and the principles of its financial activity. Any person acquainted with the activity of the central adminsitrative apparatus of the Russian Orthodox church knows clearly that substantial sums of money within the Moscow patriarchate simply cannot elude the attention of theleading persons, particularly the permanent members of the Holy Synod. A suggestion of some millions of dollars kept secret from the patriarch or from the chief of staff of the RPTs is rather stupid or leads to the conclusion that anarchy rules in the leadership of RPTs, and that the patriarch elected by the local council is unable to deal with this anarchy. We suggest that this is an undoubted distortion of the real state of affairs. All financial, administative, and political aspects of the life of the church are completely controlled by the most holy patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus. Not a single one of the subordinate departments of the Moscow patriarch can take a serious step without his knowledge.

Thus, the above mentioned Staff of Humanitarian Aid, even though it is under OVTsS, really does not use and never has used the OVTsS account for its activity. This can be proved by a most careful financial public audit (apparently, conducted exclusively by members of the church). A completely different account is used for the work of the Commission on Humanitarian Aid, which has no connection to OVTss, and the president of the commission always has been the patriarch himself. Therefore Metropolitan Kirill cannot "make a financial accounting for the so-called humanitarian aid" when it is demanded of him. He simply has nothing to do with this aid.

In the numbers themself described by the authors of the revelations as supersecret there is nothing "super" nor "secret." The investigator of NG was able easily to become acquainted with them in completely legal financial accounts of the Staff on Humanitarian Aid, where along with the notation that they are going to "mundane activity of the church" the specific quantities of the monatery totals received from the implementation of humanitarian production are indicated.

But why in any case does the Staff fall within the Department of External Church Relations and use the letterhead of the department for its activity? According to Archprist Vladimir Veriga: "The Staff is not a juridical person and historically the most important administrative structures of the church are located on the territory of Saint Daniel's monastery as the first one returned by the Soviet regime to the church. We never imagined that it would become necessary to justify this to anyone. Or that anyone could suggest that the departments of the Moscow patriarchate could work by themselves; we all are doing one work."

Incidentally, about Father Vladimir Veriga. In the same edition of Moskovskii komsomolets a letter was made pubic from "parishioners of Saint Nicholas' church in San Francisco," in which Father Vladimir Veriga served a long time as rector. This document, dated 1990 and addressed to the "Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, Procurator of the USSR, and KGB of the USSR" puts Father Vladimir in an extremely unflattering light. He is accused of conduct impermissible for a priest, from embezzlement and speculation to a lust for "viewing pornographic and sexual television programs" and "lavish drinking." The authors of the letter even doubt the "ecclesiastical competence" of the priest. But, really, all these accusations are used for one goal--to cast doubt on the moral worthiness of the televised sermons of Metropolitan Kirill, whose "parish" is announced as Father Vladimir Veriga (in the context of a certain talk about a priest and his parish).

The history of this letter is quite interesting in itself. As NG has learned, it was sent (during the time of the USSR) to several addresses, the OVTsS, Chisty Lane, the KGB, the Procurator General, and the State Department of USA, from where it reached the American embassy in Moscow. Who in particular of the above mentioned addressees would need the publicity from the information about the immoral priest today? In "NG-Religion" we surely will return to untangling this fascinating intrigue.

But then, in 1990, on the basis of this complaint, Father Vladimir was denied an American visa. True, to the credit of the State Department of USA, after it was shown that everything in the letter, from the first to last letter, was a LIE his visa was reissued with apologies in 1995. NG had at its disposal an explanation of this story, given by the president of the famous organization Russian Art and Culture Society, Dimitry Gribanovsky, who is a parishioner of the church in San Francisco. He, in particular, states that the "group of persons," who "disliked the patriotic and public activity of Father Vladimir," the former "Russian padre who preached love for Russia and the Russian church," were dismissed from the church committee "for slander of Father Vladimir."

The causes of the conflict really were financial. It was a matter that according to American law the property of the parish can be disposed of only by the parish itself (through trusted persons). And if the parish takes a decision about the futility of its further existence, then it (like a corporation with limited liability) can self-liquidate, after dividing the balance of the property. The total value of the property of the parish of Saint Nicholas in San Francisco was several hundred thousand dollars.

Actually Father Vladimir blocked the commercial plans of several prominent representatives of the naturalized emigration that was in the USA. It was for just this that the priest who had graduated from ecclesiastical academy and defended a dissertation of the theology of Origen, and whose humanitarian activity had been broadcast to all the world by the authoritative television channel CNN, was accused of illiteracy along with all mortal sins.

But let's return to the Russian Orthodox church's cigarettes. How much indignation has been heaped by the nonchurch public on the church's hierarchy for the very fact of the sale of these cigarettes! Of course, it is understandable that the totally nonsmoking public would be upset. At a time when the ministry of health is making warnings the churchmen are acting in a way to get around its insistent warnings. This alarmed public is not interested in the opinion of those soldiers who are exhausted from boredom and cold in the trenches of the Chechen war who would have to spend their time deprived of "Shipki" cigarettes, several million packages of which, according to the document, the RPTs sent gratis to these accursed trenches. Or in the opinion of the miners who haven't been paid for years but who were surely pleased with the free tobacco presented to them by the Moscow patriarchate.

And if one approaches this problem quite strictly, then it must be declared precisely that no councils or any other resolutions have forbidden Orthodox to smoke (except for the Hundred Chapters council of the sixteenth century which decreed the death penalty for 'tobacco smoking' but which was more a matter of state than of religion). Of course, monks and priests are advised not to smoke, but even for them , and much more so for laity, smoking of tobacco is not and cannot be a sin. And the same is true of drinking wine. In one of the early counciliar decisions, on the contrary, it is indicated that whoever stubbornly abstains from food and wine during a holiday can be subjected to ecclesiastical punishment.

Typically, the fear of tobacco always has been a characteristic of sectarian consciousness, ascribing to aromatic smoke, inhaling and exhaling, a mystical significance. And there was a time when even forks were considered "weapons of the devil."

And the simple fact of the enjoyment by the Moscow patriarchate of a privileged tax status is not in any way seditious. Everything was done with the knowledge and approval of appropriate state agencies. And cigarettes were not the only imports (although apparently they were the most profitable) since in addition to them groceries and building materials have been imported.

If it can be shown (a disclosure can only be made at a church council) that the income received did not go to "mundame activity of RPTs," then this unquestionably would be a serious occasion of internal church scandal. Because the responsibility for obeying the statute of RPTs is borne not only by the Moscow patriarchate but by the plenitude of the church, all the people constituting it.

And surely that is a quite different story.

(C) Nezavisimaia gazeta