The Pope may no longer be an Italian, but it goes without saying that the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia must be a Russian. Until last week, that is, when yet another unbreakable rule was broken in the Soviet Union. At the resplendently gilded Trinity-St. Sergius monastery in Zagorsk, ceremonial bells and chimes greeted the election of an Estonian of German stock, Metropolitan Aleksy of Leningrad, as the next Patriarch. It is the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution that the Russian Orthodox Church has chosen its leader free of manipulation by the atheistic regime.
The new Patriarch draws immediate...
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