Visit at the Alexander Nevski Monastery

The Speech of His Highly Honoured Igumen

in the main Hall of the Monastery

Some notices about the speech:

The speaker was telling first some details about the history of the Monastery and mentioned the time during the communism (Soviet Union), when there were a lot of different institutions occupying the buildings. The Monastery was not acceptable, so there were no Monks or Priest during that period. The Hall where we were, was rebuilt from the main church in to the present form as a concert hall. After getting back to the Monastery this hall was decided to stay as it was, because there was no money to rebuild it again.

During the Soviet time, the State did own all religious buildings including all churches. The few churches, which were given to the religious service, had to be taken care by the church. If they were not in good condition, the State could take them back from the church and the church had to pay fine for the situation.

Now the Church own the buildings again, but not getting any money from the State to rebuild or renovate them. All must be done with the economical support, they are getting from the believers or donators. The Government does think, that because these building were given to the church free, and they are now owned by the church, the church has to “pay back” by taking care of the poorest people, social under privilege and alcoholic persons. The idea is as: “to get them as believers, they will be able to control their lives by them selves.” This is creating a lot of problems to the church to day.

There is a funny situation, when children are getting religious teaching, but their parents and grand parents are atheist because of the education during the Soviet time. Normally there are the grand parents taking their grand children to the church and teaching them, how to behave there. In our country the situation is other ways. Here we are having small children bringing their grand parents to the church and showing them what to do and how to behave. It is nice to have these people here, but it is somehow a little bit funny.

The Communist regime was having plans to run down all buildings on this area including the grave yard with a lot of graves of Famous Russian artists and writers. The World War II came there between and saved this Monastery. Something good with the war, I can say.

There was asked, if the highest leaders of the State (president and prime minister) are giving something good to the church, when they seems to be very active to show them selves at the Church Services during the important Church Holidays.

Our Host answered “no, they are doing that only because of political reasons. It is good to be seen as a believer together with the highest representative of the Church, because that is what ordinary people want to see”. “We call them as Candle Sticks”, he said.

There was asked as well, how many members the Orthodox Church in Russia is having.

We got an answer, that there is no register of so called members. “We do have notices of baptised persons and some other statistics, but no member lists. We do have statistics about visitors and other items, but we are really not keeping any lists of population”, he said.

(This is one of the main differences between Lutheran churches in the Scandinavian Countries and Russian church. Our Churches are Register Authorities for several centuries, Russian Church never was.)

Our Highly Honoured Host was telling us, that they are calculating about 70% of Russians to visit Church every now and then and about 20% can be nominated as “believers”, because they are belonging to the active “members of the parish”. Our parishes are based on the Territorial Principle, when you are living on a certain territory, you are belonging to that Parish, which is located on that area.

The Russian Orthodox Church is not having that Principle. Who ever and from where ever can visit which ever church and be an active “member”.

by Esko Vepsä

(after requests)