Pimen I.

Pimen (1976)

Pimen I. ( Russian Патриарх Пимен , real name Sergei Mikhailovich Iswekow , Сергей Михайлович Извеков ; born July 10, ^jul. / 23. July  1910 ^greg. In Kobylino, Kaluga province , † 3. May 1990 in the Danilov Monastery in Moscow ) was as the 14th  Patriarch of Moscow and all of Russia from 1971 to 1990 head of the Russian Orthodox Church .

Life

Sergei Michailowitsch Iswekow was born in the industrial city of Bogorodsk about 50 km east of Moscow as the son of a mechanic. He entered a Moscow monastery in 1925 at the age of 15 and took the name Pimen after an Egyptian monk father from the time of the Old Church at the monk shearing in 1927. In 1931 he was ordained a monk deacon and in 1932 a monk priest.

The biography of Pimen during the thirties and early forties is known only in part. According to rumors that did not find their way into the official biography, he took part in the Second World War as a member of an information unit of the Red Army , concealing his monastic vows , but was arrested after his identity was discovered. After 1946 he was a monk in various Russian monasteries and served the Church in various positions in different places. From 1949 he was governor of the Pskov cave monastery in western Russia, from 1954 of the Trinity monastery of Sergiev Posad , then: Sagorsk . He was ordained bishop on November 17, 1957, and in 1960 he was appointed archbishop as head of the Moscow Patriarchate Administration and at the same time appointed a permanent member of the Holy Synod . In 1961 he was appointed Metropolitan of Leningrad and Ladoga, from 1963 he headed the Moscow Eparchy as Metropolitan of Krutitsy and Kolomna . After the death of Patriarch Alexius I , he was elected Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia on June 2, 1971 by the State Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The first half of his term of office fell into the Brezhnev era, in which the more restrictive measures against the church introduced under Khrushchev were not lifted, but were handled more liberally. In spite of all internal difficulties, the Soviet leadership was interested in the Church appearing in foreign policy. Even before his election as patriarch, Pimen I was a member of various peace initiatives that were initiated by the Soviet government in order to demonstrate its readiness for peace during the Cold War . In July 1977 he received the Order of the Red Labor Banner for this "patriotic work" in the spirit of peace . In addition, his term of office was characterized by the strengthening of ecumenical contacts with various Western churches. This also included his participation in the Christian Peace Conference (CFK), at whose 5th All-Christian Peace Assembly he took part in 1978 in Prague .

The second half of his term of office coincides with the liberalization of the communist system under Gorbachev . Ecclesiastical highlights in this context meant two anniversaries, on the one hand the millennium of the baptism of Russia in 1988, commemorating the Christianization of the Kievan Rus under Vladimir I , and on the other hand the four hundredth anniversary of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1989.

The millennium finally brought the Russian Orthodox Church recognition as a socially relevant organization. Pimen I. was received by Gorbachev on April 29, 1988 and received extensive promises about the establishment of new parishes and theological seminaries. In addition, for the first time in Soviet history , the Church was promised that it would officially give religious instruction. However, the commitments were only legally guaranteed after Pimens I's death by the Religious Act of October 1, 1990. The millennium celebrations were the first Christian celebrations to be reported in the official media and broadcast on state television.

At the four-centenary of the Moscow Patriarchate on October 13, 1989, a funeral service for the deceased patriarchs was celebrated in one of the cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin , the Uspensky Cathedral (Dormition Cathedral). It was the first church celebration in the Kremlin since 1918. Pimen I, who was already seriously ill at that time, could not lead the service himself, but afterwards gave his blessing to the crowd in front of the cathedral.

Even before the anniversary celebrations, in 1982, Pimen I had asked the government to return one of the expropriated Moscow monasteries to the church in order to set up the patriarchal residence and the administrative center of the Russian Orthodox Church. The request was granted and the church was allowed to choose one of the former monasteries. On the basis of Pimen's decision, she took possession of the Danilow Monastery again and carried out the urgently needed restoration work there. The rededication of the monastery coincided with the millennium.

The last years of Pimens I's term of office were overshadowed by severe diabetes and, most recently, by cancer, which made walking impossible for him at times. Nevertheless, he tried to fulfill his official duties to the end. The late patriarch was buried in the crypt of the Uspensky Cathedral of the Trinity Monastery of Sergiev Posad .

literature

• Obituary for Patriarch Pimen in: The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate , vol. 8 (1990), p. 10ff.
• Peter Hauptmann : From the Russian Orthodox Church. In: Kirche im Osten , vol. 34 (1991), pp. 129–179.

Remarks

1. ↑ For the biography cf. Hauptmann, Kirche des Ostens 34 (1991), pp. 134-137 and the obituary in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate of August 1990.
2. ↑ See http://www.answers.com/topic/patriarch-pimen
3. ↑ See under http://www.ibka.org/ir/1f.html .
4. ↑ See Hauptmann, Kirche im Osten 34 (1991), pp. 130f.

Web links

Commons : Pimen I.  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• CV (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
Alexius I.	Patriarch of Moscow 1971 - 1990	Alexius II