Diocese of Kaliningrad and Baltiysk

Cathedral of Christ the Savior (Kaliningrad)

The Russian Orthodox Diocese of Kaliningrad and Baltijsk (Russian Калининградская и Балтийская епархия, Kaliningradskaja i Baltijskaja jeparchija) is a diocese in the far west of Russia. It covers the territory of Kaliningrad Oblast , a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea in the area of the former East Prussia . The Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Kaliningrad, built between 1996 and 2006, serves as the metropolitan church .

history

The new residents of Kaliningrad Oblast , who came there after the occupation by the Soviet Union , had no opportunity to attend Orthodox services until 1985. In the State Archives of the Kaliningrad Oblast (GAKO) there are documents that between 1947 and 1956 people made dozens of petitions both to the central organs and to the local administration, demanding permission to establish a parish. Some of these requests had more than 200 signatures. Patriarch Alexius I and the Archbishop of Vilnius also tried, but the Communist Party wanted the Kaliningrad Oblast to remain officially atheist.

The believers therefore had to meet secretly in various towns and villages in the oblast to pray and celebrate church services. Many went to Lithuania to B. to have their children baptized, and priests from Lithuania and Belarus often went to the border areas of the Kaliningrad Oblast. The new wave of persecution of Christians at the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s did not have much of an impact in the Kaliningrad Oblast because the groups of believers were very small, stable and secret (20 to 30 people at most). In 1967 only one Baptist community was registered in Kaliningrad, which opened a house of prayer and remained the only legal religious group until 1985.

In 1985 an Orthodox parish was registered. The then Bishop of Smolensk, Kyrill , visited the city of Kaliningrad in the same year and the Kaliningrad Oblast was incorporated into the Smolensk Eparchy . The service was celebrated in a prayer house on Tretyakovskaya Street and Father Sofronij became the first pastor of the Kaliningrad parish. Soon the house chapel was too small, as there were a total of 500 parishioners. At the same time as the registration, the Orthodox believers were awarded the ruins of the former Protestant Juditter Church . It was said, "For 40 years people have asked for a church and now they will reconstruct it for another 40 years." Young and old people strived to renew the church. The reconstruction was finished after a year and the church was consecrated to St. Nicholas of Myra , like the first church in Königsberg in the 13th century. Today this church belongs to an Orthodox convent.

In 1986 a parish was established in Baltiysk, and many other parishes in the following years. In Kaliningrad itself, some former Protestant churches have been handed over to the Orthodox Church. In 1988 the 1000th anniversary of the Christianization of Russia was celebrated, which made a wider public aware that the Church and ancient traditions were still alive.

The diocese of Kaliningrad and Baltiysk was finally created on March 31, 2009 through the division of the former diocese of Smolensk and Kaliningrad . In space Smolensk became the new result of the division of the Diocese of Smolensk and Vyazma built.

The believers

According to the research service Sreda, the following information was available in the Kaliningrad Oblast in 2012:

	Average in Russia	In the Kaliningrad Oblast
I profess Orthodoxy and belong to the Russian Orthodox Church.	41%	31%
I believe in God (in a higher force), but do not profess any specific religion.	25%	34%
I do not believe in god.	13%	22%
I profess Catholicism.	0%	1 %

Alina Bagrina, coordinator of the Sreda research service, said, among other things, that residents of Russia who are patriotic and love Russia are most likely to be believers - while people who want to emigrate are often unbelievers.

clergy

The Kaliningrad Eparchy was formed in 2009 when it was separated from the Smolensk Eparchy. The bishop of the eparchy is Patriarch Kirill I, because before his appointment as patriarch he had led the entire Smolensk eparchy together with Kaliningrad. Of course, as a patriarch, he cannot stay in Kaliningrad very often and is therefore supported by Bishop Serafim. According to official information from the Russian Orthodox Church, there are 77 priests and ten deacons in the Kaliningrad eparchy (as of December 2012). Bishop Serafim announced in 2011 that most of the priests came from Kaliningrad Oblast and had studied theology in Smolensk . The priests are on average 35 years old, only about five are older than 50 years.

Nuns and convents

There are a total of 46 nuns and novices in two monasteries:

The Hl.-Liza Monastery was founded in 2000 in Priosjorje in slavsky district established. The monastery is inhabited by about 25 nuns and novices. There is an ostrich farm, book printing, sewing workshop and carpentry workshop. They make icons and work with amber. Homeless people get shelter, clothes, food and work; the House of Mercy takes care of older women.

The monastery in honor of the icon of the Mother of God Derzhavnaya is located in Isobilnoye in Polessk Raion and was founded in the 1990s. Among other things, the monastery provides food for the needy every Sunday and supports children in the middle school in Saranskoje in various ways . The current abbess Sofia comes from Germany and converted to Orthodoxy in the St. Jelissaveta Monastery.

The latter monastery will have a monastery branch in Kaliningrad from 2015, the former St. Nicholas Monastery.

Youth work and education

In 2012, according to Patriarch Kirill, 1,254 children from the Kaliningrad eparchy took part in a church summer camp, and thousands of children attended religious education at school. There are church kindergartens with around 60 children and an Orthodox grammar school. The high school was founded in 2008 and is located near the Christ the Savior Cathedral. Today over 200 students are registered there. In addition to the usual compulsory subjects, they learn church history, the basics of the Orthodox faith, choral singing, Church Slavonic, etc.

Social work

The social work is partly coordinated by a department of the Kaliningrad Eparchy. There are 34 institutions and organizations, mostly at churches and monasteries, that participate in social work, for example:

Volunteers visit old, lonely or sick people at home and in hospitals, help the homeless, etc.
A crisis center has been opened for pregnant women and women with children who have problems.
There is a facility that provides rehabilitation and accommodation for alcohol and drug addicts.
Priests are visited by priests.

Communities

Diocesan territory

At the beginning of 2010 there were 73 parishes in the area of the diocese, the number of which is increasing. In addition to earlier times of the Soviet Union unused and dilapidated Lutheran churches like the Juditter church , some church buildings have been built in traditional Russian style, such as the Metropolitan Church. In addition, there are other church buildings that previously served secular purposes or were places of worship of other denominations (e.g. the former synagogue in Sovetsk (Tilsit) ).

Web links

Individual evidence

[1] http://sreda.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/kaliningradskaya_2vera.jpg . Retrieved December 28, 2015.

[2] ttp://sreda.org/arena

[3] ttp://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/602652.html

[4] ttp://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/602652.html

[5] ttps://forum.optina.ru/topic/1070-%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%85%D0%B8-%D0%BE-%D1%81% D0% B2% D0% BE% D0% B8% D1% 85-% D0% BC% D0% BE% D0% BD% D0% B0% D1% 81% D1% 82% D1% 8B% D1% 80% D1 % 8F% D1% 85-% D0% B8-% D0% BD% D0% B5-% D1% 82% D0% BE% D0% BB% D1% 8C% D0% BA% D0% BE / page-4

[6] ttp://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/4067545.html

[7] ttp://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/2668856.html (video in Russian)

[8] ttp://www.pravmir.ru/patriarx-kirill-osvyatil-novyj-korpus-gimnazii-pri-kafedralnom-sobore-kaliningrada/

[9] ttp://www.miloserdie.ru/social/search?region_id=4