Anastasius Gribanowski

Anastasius as Bishop of Serpuchow

Metropolitan Anastasius (and before: Anastassi , Russian Митрополит Анастасий , maiden name Alexander Alexeyevich Gribanowski or Russian Александр Алексеевич Грибановский * 6. August 1873 , † 22. May 1965 ) was a hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church and the second First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad .

Life

Gribanowski was born in 1873 in the village of Bratki in Ujezd Borissoglebski in the Tambov governorate (today: Ternowka district , Voronezh Oblast ). His parents were the priest Alexei Gribanowski and Anna (née Karmasina) .

Gribanowsky first attended the theological school in Tambov and then the theological seminary there and continued his training at the Moscow Theological Academy . At that time, Archimandrite Antonius Chrapowizki , who later became Metropolitan of Kiev and founder and first hierarch of ROKA , was the rector . After graduating from the Academy in April 1898, Alexander received the tonsure from Bishop Alexander von Tambow and became a monk by the name of Anastasius based on Anastasios Sinaites . On April 23, 1898 he was ordained Hierodeacon and shortly thereafter Hieromonachos .

In 1900 Anastasius was appointed inspector of the Bethanien Theological Seminary at the Trinity Monastery of Sergiev Posad . In 1901 he was appointed inspector of the Moscow Theological Seminary and raised to the rank of archimandrite.

On June 29, 1906, he was ordained bishop of Serpuchow , as vicar (auxiliary bishop) for the diocese of Moscow . On the occasion of the ordination, he gave the famous sermon "The True Way of Christ's Pastoral Work", in which he apparently foresaw the upheavals and persecutions that were to come.

As Vicar of the Moscow Diocese, Anastasios' tasks were the daily services in the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin , in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and in other Moscow churches and monasteries, as well as the duty to visit the parishes to lead theological Schools and to lead a committee to prepare for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino and the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.

In May 1914 Anastasius was appointed to the Eparchy of Cholm and Lublin . A little later the First World War began and, in addition to his duties in the diocese, Anastasius also looked after the soldiers at the front, for which he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir and later the Order of Alexander Nevsky .

In 1915 he had to leave the diocese due to the war and initially lived in the Chudov monastery in Moscow. In late 1915 he was appointed to the eparchy of Chișinău and Chotin and in 1916 raised to the rank of archbishop . With the opening of the Romanian front, Anastasius found himself again in a war zone.

In August 1917 he left Bessarabia and went to Moscow to take part in the All-Russian Council of 1917-1918. In the elections for the Patriarch of Moscow he received 77 votes and participated in the preparations for the enthronement of Patriarch Tikhon , as he himself describes in the article "Election and Enthronement of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, his personality and [his] work". As Archbishop, Anastasius was called to the Holy Synod .

In October 1918 he left Moscow again and went to Odessa in the hope of being able to return to Chişinău, which was under Romanian occupation at the time. However, he failed to return to Bessarabia as the Romanian authorities put pressure on the parishes to leave the Russian Church and place it under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Patriarchate . Anastasius did not want to change to the Romanian church and therefore stayed in Odessa. With the invasion of the Bolsheviks in 1919 he was forced to go to Constantinople . He returned briefly to Russia, visited Novorossiysk , Rostov and Novocherkassk , where he sought contact with the Supreme Church Authority in Southeast Russia, at that time the Metropolitan Antonius (Khrapovitsky). Then he left Russia again for Constantinople.

In 1921 he visited Mount Athos and the Holy Land at the request of the "Provisional Higher Church Administration Abroad" to familiarize himself with the state of the Russian monasteries there. Then he took part in the first all-diaspora council of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in Sremski Karlovci in Serbia as administrator of the Russian congregations in the area of ​​Constantinople's sphere of influence.

In 1923 he took part in the so-called “Pan-Orthodox Congress” in Constantinople at the invitation of Patriarch Meletios II of Constantinople. Congress passed decisions on the adoption of the New Calendar , remarriage for clergy and married bishops, shortening of church services, abolition of Lent and simplification of liturgical vestments. Anastasius appeared as an opponent of the innovations, which he regarded as uncanonical . Because the Ecumenical Patriarchate forbade the intercessions for Patriarch Tikhon in the services in the Russian Orthodox congregations and also required Anastasius to give up the connections to the foreign church, he was forced to leave Constantinople again and made his way to Bulgaria through France . In Bulgaria he took part in the consecration of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and then went to Serbia.

In 1924 he was appointed administrator of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Jerusalem and traveled to the Holy Land, where he spent the next ten years.

In 1935 he took part in a council convened by the Serbian Patriarch Varnava Rosić with the aim of restoring the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad. The council also Metropolitan took Eulogius (Georgievsky) (Евлогий, Василий Семёнович Георгиевский, Ewlogi, Vasily Semyonovich Georgievsky ) part, as head of the West European Metropolitan Church (predecessor of the Exarchate of Orthodox parishes of Russian tradition in Western Europe ) and Metropolitan Theophilus Pasch Frankowski of San Francisco , as head of the North American metropolis (later: Orthodox Church in America ) and Bishop Dimitri (Vosnesensky) as the representative of the metropolis of the Far East. At this meeting, the unity of the Church abroad was renewed, if only temporarily, and the bishops signed the Temporary Statutes of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which became its constitution. On this occasion, Anastasius was raised to the rank of Metropolitan and appointed assistant to Metropolitan Antonius Khrapovitsky.

After the death of Metropolitan Antonius in 1936, Anastasius was unanimously elected as the new First Hierarch of the Church Abroad. In 1938 he was chairman of the second all-diaspora council.

At the beginning of the Second World War , Anastasius found himself once again in the danger zone when the Germans bombed and captured Belgrade in 1941 . The invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 caused Joseph Stalin to change his policy towards the Russian Church. Stalin released bishops from prison and allowed churches to open. With his permission, the hierarchs in the Soviet Union elected Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodski as Patriarch of Moscow on September 8, 1943 . On October 21, 1943, Metropolitan Anastasius and eight exiled hierarchs in Vienna condemned the election as uncanonical.

When the Soviet Army marched on Belgrade in September 1944, the Synod of Bishops fled to Vienna and in summer 1945 to Munich . From 1948 onwards, many Russian refugees left Europe for the United States. Therefore, many urged the Synod to cross the Atlantic , especially after the events of the 1946 All-American Council of Cleveland , where the North American metropolis decided to cut ties with the Church abroad. In view of these circumstances, Anastasius went to New York on November 23, 1950. Immediately after his arrival in the United States on November 25, 1950, he traveled to Jordanville , where he consecrated the Trinity Cathedral, the main church of the Trinity Monastery there. The consecration was followed by the first meeting of the Council of Bishops of the Church Abroad on United States soil with the participation of eleven hierarchs.

On this occasion, and for the first and only time in the history of the Church abroad, Metropolitan Anastasius carried out the consecration of chrism . She had previously received the chrism from the Serbian Orthodox Church .

Metropolitan Anastasius took his seat in the New Kursk-Root Hermitage in Mahopac . As a result of his efforts, around a hundred new congregations emerged in North America and he consecrated six new bishops: Antony (Sinkevich) of Los Angeles , Awerki (Tauschew) of Syracuse, Sawa (Rajewski) of Sydney, Antony (Medvedev) of San Francisco, Sawa (Sarachevich ) from Edmonton and Nektarius (Konzewitsch) from Seattle. Every summer from 1951 Anastasius made a trip through the United States to California , where he spent part of the summer in San Francisco . There, on his initiative, the Synod established the All Saints of Russia congregation in Burlingame .

Due to his poor health, Anastasius asked for a successor to be chosen in 1964. To this end, the Bishops' Council met on May 27, 1964 and elected Bishop Filaret Voznesensky of Brisbane as the new First Hierarch of the Church Abroad. Metropolitan Anastasius stepped into retirement and the Synod gave him the title of "happiness" ( Beautitude ) with the right to two Panagias to wear. His last service as bishop was at the canonization of John of Kronstadt at the same meeting of the Bishops' Council. Anastasius died soon afterwards on May 22, 1965. He was buried in the Trinity Monastery in Jordanville.

literature

Archbishop Averky (Taushev) of Syracuse and Holy Trinity: The life of the His Beatitude, Metropolitan Anastasy.

Web links

Commons : Anastasius (Gribanovsky)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• orthodoxcanada.ca .
• orthodoxengland.org .