Head of the Russian Orthodox Church
The Eastern Orthodox Church
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Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Aleksii II
Head of the Russian Orthodox Church
The patriarch was born Aleksei Mikhailovich Ridiger on 23 February 1929 in Tallinn, Estonia. He entered seminary in Leningrad in 1947 and in 1950 was assigned to his first parish in Estonia.
According to "Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader," Aleksii was recruited by the Estonian KGB in February 1958 and served for the agency for the next three decades. However, Aleksii's official biography makes no mention of service in the Soviet Union's intelligence service.
In 1961, Aleksii was named bishop (episcop) of Tallinn and Estonia.
In 1964, he was named a permanent member of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church and named to a position at the administration of the Moscow Patriarchate.
From 1963 to 1979 he was a member of the Commission for the Holy Synod on Christian unity and interchurch relations.
In 1986, he was named metropolitan for Leningrad and Novgorod.
In 1990, Aleksii was named patriarch for Moscow and all Russia.
Bishop Feofan of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz
Russian Orthodox bishop who is playing a key role in Russia's counterterrorism efforts
Because of his long exposure to the Middle East, Bishop Feofan has acquired the reputation within the Russian Orthodox Church as perhaps its leading specialist on dealing with Islamic countries.
That may help to explain why he was named to his current bishopric in May 2003, only six months after he had been elevated to the position of bishop of Magadan.
A 1976 graduate of the Moscow Spiritual Academy, Feofan, 57, has served in progressively more responsible positions within the Patriarchate's Department of Foreign Relations and as a representative of the Patriarchate to church bodies in the Middle East.
From 1977 to 1982, he worked at the Russian Spiritual Mission in Jerusalem.
From 1989 to 1993, he served as the Moscow Patriarchate's representative to the Orthodox Patriarch at Alexandria.
From 1999 to 2002, he filled a similar role at the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch.
In the intervening periods, he worked at the Moscow Patriarchate's Department of Foreign Relations, most recently from 1993 to 1999 as the deputy chief of that department.
While in all these posts, Feofan cemented his close ties with Metropolitan Kirill, the longtime head of that department, a churchman reputed to have the closest of ties to Russian security agencies, and the current odds-on favorite to succeed Aleksii as the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Cardinal Lubomyr Huzar
Head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic
(Uniate) Church
Lubomyr Huzar, an ethnic Ukrainian, was born in Lviv (then in Poland) in 1933.
In 1949 he emigrated to the United States. He was ordained a priest in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1958, following studies in a seminary and the Catholic University of America in Washington. Following his ordination, he earned a master's degree in philosophy from Fordham University in New York.
After moving to Rome to earn a doctorate in theology at Urbanian University, Husar became a Studite monk.
In 1974, he was elected superior of the Studite monastery at Grottaferrata, near Rome.
Lubomyr Huzar moved to Ukraine in 1992, and was consecrated as bishop in 1995 and elected auxiliary bishop of Lviv in 1996.
Following the death of Metropolitan Myroslav Cardinal Lubachivskyy, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, in 2000, Husar was appointed administrator of the Lviv Archdiocese.
In January 2001 Husar was elected head the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and nominated cardinal by the pope.
Metropolitan Filaret
Head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus
Filaret, metropolitan of Minsk and Belarus, heads the Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus as patriarchal exarch of all of Belarus. An ethnic Russian, Filaret was born in Moscow in 1935 under the secular name of Kirill Vakhromeev.
In 1953 he entered a seminary and in 1954 the Moscow Theological Academy, which he completed with a doctorate in theology in 1961.
In 1959 he received the monastic tonsure under the name of Filaret.
He was ordained bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1965 and subsequently served at various church posts in Kaliningrad, Moscow, and Minsk.
Filaret was appointed metropolitan of Minsk and Belarus in 1978.
In 1989, the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church organized the Belarusian Exarchate and Filaret was named the patriarchal exarch of all of Belarus.
In 1990, Metropolitan Filaret was elected a people's deputy to the Supreme Council of the Belarusian SSR.
Filaret is a strong advocate of rapprochement between Belarus and Russia and staunch supporter of policies of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
Bishop Jovan
Serbian Orthodox bishop
Bishop Jovan became a central figure in the long-standing dispute between the Macedonian Orthodox Church (MPC) and the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) when he switched allegiance from MPC to the SPC in 2003.
He was arrested in January 2004 for "conducting illegal religious services on non-church land" and was sentenced on 19 August by a court in Bitola for inciting religious and ethnic hatred.
Prosecutors also charged that he published calendars and other religious literature that allegedly slandered the MPC.
The central problem is deeply rooted in what historians call the Macedonian Question and interrelated issues involving the traditional Balkan tendency to equate one's nationality with one's religion. In 1967, the communist Macedonian authorities recognized a MPC separate from the SPC and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which has a much smaller number of Macedonian adherents than the other two. The SPC and other Orthodox churches do not recognize their Macedonian counterpart, regarding it as schismatic.
Patriarch Pavle
Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church
Patriarch Pavle was born Gojko Stojcevic in the village of Kucani (Kucanci) in Slavonia on 11 September 1914. As Serbian patriarch, he is also the archbishop of Pec and the metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovac.
Pavle attended primary school in his native village, middle school in Tuzla, and high school in Belgrade. For six years, he studied at the Orthodox Seminary in Sarajevo and later graduated from Belgrade University's School of Theology.
At the beginning of World War II he was mobilized to serve in the Yugoslav Army's health corps, but later managed to return to Slavonia.
Between 1944 and 1955 he was a monastic in Raca Monastery, and during the 1950-51 academic year he became a lecturer at the Theological Seminary in Prizren. He remained a lecturer at this institution until his election as Serbian patriarch.
In 1955, Pavle left for postgraduate studies at the Orthodox Theological Faculty at the University of Athens.
After his return to Serbia, Bishop Emilian of Slavonija elevated Pavle to the rank of archimandrite in 1957. That same year, he was elected Bishop of Raska and Prizren.
During his time as bishop, Pavle authored numerous scholarly publications on liturgics. As head of the Holy Synod's Commission on Translations, Bishop Pavle was responsible for the publication of a Serbian version of the New Testament.
On 1 December 1990, Bishop Pavle was chosen by lot from three candidates nominated by the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The following day, he was enthroned as Serbian patriarch. The procedure to choose the patriarch by lot was introduced in 1967 in order to thwart attempts of the then-communist authorities to influence the elections.
Because of his simple lifestyle and personal humility, official sources describe Patriarch Pavle as a "walking saint." He reportedly refuses to have a personal car and driver and prefers to walk or use public transport.
Patriarch's Pavle's election coincided with the upsurge of Serbian nationalism under Serbian and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Patriarch Pavle and the Serbian Orthodox Church have been criticized by Croats, Muslims, and Kosovars for not unambiguously criticizing Serbian ethnic-cleansing campaigns in those regions during the 1990s.
Patriarch Pavle did, however, oppose Milosevic within the context of Serbian domestic politics. Following the fall of Milosevic in 2000, Pavle and the SPC drew criticism from many politicians and commentators for becoming involved in political issues such as the selection of state symbols and the drafting of school curricula.
Archbishop Stefan
Macedonian Orthodox Church archbishop
of Ohrid And Macedonia
Gospodin Gospodin Stefan, archbishop Of Ohrid And Macedonia, was born Stojan Veljanovski in the village of Dobrusevo in southern Macedonia on 1 May 1955.
In 1969, he enrolled in the Macedonian Orthodox Theological Seminary of St. Kliment Ohridski in Dracevo, where he graduated in 1974. That same year, he went to Belgrade to study at the Theological Faculty, graduating in 1979.
Upon his return to Macedonia, the Holy Synod of the Macedonian Orthodox Church named him a teacher at the Theological Seminary in Skopje. In 1980, he left for postgraduate studies at the Institute of St. Nicholas in Bari, Italy, which specializes in ecumenical-patristic and Greco-Byzantine studies. In 1982, he received a master's degree from this institute.
When he returned to Macedonia, Stefan became a lecturer at Skopje's St. Kliment Ohridski Theological Faculty.
He took his monastic vows at the St. Naum monastery in Ohrid on 3 July 1986, and on 12 July he was named metropolitan of Zletovo and Strumica. Shortly thereafter he was enthroned as bishop of Bregalnica and Stip.
In the following years, Bishop Stefan served as dean of the Theological Faculty in Skopje, spokesman for the Holy Synod of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, as editor in chief of the church's official gazette "Crkoven zivot," and as secretary-general of the Archbishopric of Ohrid and Macedonia.
In Ohrid on 9 and 10 October 1999, the Church National Assembly -- a congregation of clerics and laymen -- elected Bishop Stefan as head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. Reacting to concerns that Bishop Stefan was only 44 years old when he was elected, Protodeacon Slave Projkovski said the Macedonian Orthodox Church believed in Stefan's intellectual and moral maturity. Projkovski added, however, that the future of the church did not only depend on Archbishop Stefan since, as head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, he was merely the first among equals.
Archbishop Stefan largely refrains from interfering in politics, but has repeatedly urged politicians to support the Macedonian Orthodox Church in its longstanding feud with the Serbian Orthodox Church, which has never recognized the legitimacy of the former.
Cardinal Kazimierz Swiatek
head of the Roman Catholic Church in Belarus
Kazimierz Swiatek, an ethnic Pole, was born in 1914 in Estonia. After completing a seminary in Pinsk (now in southern Belarus), he was ordained a priest in 1939 and sent to the parish of Pruzhana in the diocese of Pinsk.
He was arrested by the KGB in April 1941 and imprisoned on death row in Brest. He escaped from prison taking advantage of the confusion caused by the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and returned to
Pruzhana.
In December 1944, the KGB arrested him for a second time. The following year he was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in concentration camps and spent nine years in Siberia and the north of the USSR, working in the taiga and mines. After his release in June 1954, he returned to Pinsk.
In 1988 he was named a chaplain of Pope John Paul II. In 1991, he was appointed Archbishop of Minsk-Mahilyou and Apostolic Administrator of Pinsk. John Paul II proclaimed Swiatek cardinal in 1994.
After the Gorbachev-era changes in the Soviet Union and the subsequent proclamation of sovereignty by Belarus, Swiatek reorganized and strengthened the ecclesiastical structures in the territory assigned to him, taking particular steps to reclaim and rebuild churches and to provide formation for the clergy.
Copyright (c) 2004/05. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
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