Moscow Patriarch Kirill – KGB agent, billionaire, and Orthodox 'hawk'

· KGB, Religious Mafia, Russia, Russian Orthodox Church

Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, permanent member of the Holy Synod, Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad. Honorary and full member of many academies. Most Orthodox believers knew no more than the above brief details about the Russian citizen named Kirill Gundyaev, who became Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’.

Ministers, and in truth, the church are not accustomed to revealing details of their personal lives, views, and preferences. In Kirill’s case, however, we have the exact opposite situation. He not only did not conceal his radical religious views, but also actively propagated them both in Russia and abroad. He became the first church hierarch in Russia to host his own television program. “The Shepherd’s Word,” with its permanent presenter and one of the main candidates for the patriarchal throne, was regularly watched by millions of believers thanks to ORT.

The ideas he put forward revolved around turning the Church into a genuine state within a state, ensuring its financial, political, and organizational independence. It was Kirill who demanded that part of Russians’ income tax be channeled into the budgets of religious organizations, including the Russian Orthodox Church. It was he who began actively promoting the Church’s active intervention in secular life and politics, including influencing the authorities from the position that “Priesthood is higher than the Kingdom.”

The only thing Kirill has already managed to achieve is the creation of a paramilitary “Orthodox Corps” within the pro-Kremlin youth movement “Nashi.” During the bishops’ council at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (Moscow), “Nashi” members together with the police guarded the surrounding areas, prevented supporters of the disgraced Metropolitan Diomid from exiting the metro, and obstructed journalists’ work.

Delivering a solemn speech on the occasion of his enthronement, the Patriarch called himself a “defender of the external canonical boundaries of the Church.”

“This service takes on special significance, which arose after the formation of independent states within the space of historical Rus’. While respecting their sovereignty and caring for the welfare of each of these states, the patriarch is at the same time called to see to the preservation and strengthening of spiritual ties among the peoples who inhabit them, for the sake of preserving the value system that the united Orthodox civilization of Holy Rus’ presents to the world,” the portal FORUM.msk quotes the new head of the Russian Orthodox Church as saying.

Considering care for the unity of universal Orthodoxy to be his task as well, he assured that he would always be open “to dialogue with sister churches and to joint efforts that would help strengthen and perfect all-Orthodox cooperation, to achieve greater coordination of pastoral and missionary efforts.”

Characteristically, the new patriarch’s words about the unity of canonical territory were heard only by one president—Dmitry Medvedev. It appears that the withdrawal from the struggle for the patriarchal throne of Kiev Metropolitan Vladimir will mean that the ROC is continuing on its path to becoming the state church of the Russian Federation, and no more than that. Medvedev himself also expressed this vision. Kirill’s imperial plans are clearly not to his liking. “Cooperation between the state and the church will be in demand for the sake of the development of our country and all Orthodox peoples,” the Russian president noted dryly.

Putin’s Fellow Countryman

According to his official biography, the patriarch was born on November 20, 1946, in Leningrad into a family of repressed church ministers. A hereditary priest.

At school, due to his religious convictions, he did not join the Pioneers or the Komsomol. He became the subject of an anti-religious article in a city newspaper.

At age 15, he left school and worked in a geological expedition.

1969 – graduated with honors from the Leningrad Theological Academy.

On June 1, 1970, he was awarded the degree of Candidate of Theology for his dissertation “The Formation and Development of the Church Hierarchy and the Teaching of the Orthodox Church on Its Grace-Filled Character.”

On April 3, 1969, Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) of Leningrad and Novgorod tonsured him as a monk; on April 7, 1969, he was ordained a hierodeacon; and on June 1, 1969, a hieromonk.

After graduating from the academy, he remained at the LTA as a professorial fellow, teacher of dogmatic theology, and assistant inspector of the LTA and Seminary.

From August 30, 1970 – personal secretary to Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov), chairman of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR). From that moment, Kirill became a kind of calling card of the Russian Orthodox Church for the West. According to his opponents, the patriarch’s foreign visits were directly connected to his work for the USSR KGB. In that agency, Gundyaev was known by the pseudonym “Mikhailov.”

In 1972, he accompanied Patriarch Pimen on his trip to the countries of the Middle East, as well as to Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Romania.

In November 1975, at the ecumenical assembly in Nairobi, he condemned the letter of dissident Fr. Gleb Yakunin about the persecution of believers in the USSR and denied the facts of violations of believers’ rights.

From November 18, 1976, to October 12, 1978 – Deputy Patriarchal Exarch of Western Europe (based on the report of November 4, 1976, from Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov), Patriarchal Exarch of Western Europe, on the need, due to his fifth heart attack, to appoint a deputy — with the proposal of Kirill’s candidacy).

On October 12, 1978, he was relieved of the post of Deputy Patriarchal Exarch of Western Europe and appointed administrator of the patriarchal parishes in Finland (he served them until 1984).

From March 27 to 29, 1979, he participated in the Consultation “The Responsibility of the Churches of the USSR and the USA for Disarmament.”

From July 12 to 24 of the same year, he headed the Russian Orthodox Church delegation at the World Conference “Faith, Science and the Future” in Cambridge (USA).

December 26, 1984, he was appointed Archbishop of Smolensk and Vyazma. As the online publication Stringer notes, the transfer to Smolensk was a demotion for Archbishop Kirill and testified to disfavor on the part of state supervisory agencies.

“… There are various rumors about the reasons he fell into disgrace. Some link it to his reformist activity in the sphere of divine services: he not only practiced the use of the Russian language in worship but also served Vespers in the evening, not in the morning, as is still customary in the Russian Orthodox Church. Another reason cited for the removal of Vladyka Kirill from Russia’s ‘northern capital’ is his refusal to vote against a resolution by the WCC Central Committee condemning the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. Meanwhile, he did not vote ‘for’ either, he merely ‘abstained,’ which, however, was almost a heroic act at the time,” — wrote Natalia Babasyan in the article “The Star of Metropolitan Kirill” (Russkiy Zhurnal, 01.04.1999).

Kirill himself believes that he fell victim to a classified resolution of the CPSU Central Committee on combating religiosity, adopted on the eve of the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus’, because of excessive activism as rector of the Theological Academy: during his rectorship access to the Leningrad Theological Academy was opened to graduates of secular higher education institutions, and in 1978 a precentor’s department was created, to which women could also be admitted.

From November 14, 1989 — chairman of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR) and permanent member of the Holy Synod. This appointment effectively signaled the lifting of state disfavor.

From July 20, 1990 — administrator of the Patriarchal parishes in Finland. On February 25, 1991, he was elevated to the rank of metropolitan.

Putin’s Colleague

However, if one trusts the reports of the Russian and world press, far from everything in Kirill’s life is so sacrificial and heroic.

In 1996 he joined the board of directors of Peresvet Bank, which serves the financial interests of the Patriarchate. According to Moscow journalists, it was from this moment that the metropolitan’s financial and property abuses began.

In September 1996 the newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti (No. 34) published a report that the DECR, headed by Metropolitan Kirill, organized in 1994–96 the import of excisable goods (primarily cigarettes) bypassing customs duties, under the guise of humanitarian aid, in amounts of tens of millions of dollars and quantities of tens of thousands of tons. The accusations were supported by other popular secular newspapers (in particular, Moskovsky Komsomolets — journalist Sergei Bychkov). It is believed that the unofficial initiator of these accusations was the then chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchate, Archbishop Sergiy (Fomin) of Solnechnogorsk. An internal church commission headed by Archbishop Sergiy (Fomin) was established to investigate these reports.

However, the position of Metropolitan Kirill, who denied the deliberate import of cigarettes into the country and said that the church could not refuse a gift that had been imposed on it, was supported by the 1997 Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. The church managed to earn several hundred million dollars, and Kirill’s wealth was then estimated at one and a half billion dollars. According to some sources, it now reaches 4 billion.

In May 2001 the same Moskovsky Komsomolets journalist Sergei Bychkov published an article “The Metropolitan from a Snuffbox,” in which he repeated the previous accusations against Metropolitan Kirill concerning tobacco imports and also for the first time publicly identified Kirill with the WCC figure “agent Mikhailov,” mentioned in previously published materials of the Supreme Council commission (the “Yakunin-Ponomaryov commission”) on KGB–ROC ties in the Soviet era.

He lives in the official DECR residence in Serebryany Bor (Moscow).

In 2002 he bought a penthouse in the House on the Embankment with a view of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (the apartment is registered to Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, “which is recorded accordingly in the cadastral register” (The New Times, No. 50 [96] of December 15, 2008).

Reports appeared in the media “about the metropolitan’s purchase of a villa in Switzerland” (ibid.).

According to Alexander Soldatov, editor-in-chief of the authoritative publication Portal-Credo.Ru dedicated to religious and church life, Metropolitan Kirill is an active and experienced businessman. His interests include stock market trading, the oil business, and trade in metals and automobiles.

On his website Antikompromat, political scientist and researcher Vladimir Pribylovsky mentions the agent “Mikhailov” in the materials of the Yakunin-Ponomaryov commission.

January 1973: “To Thailand and India for participation in the work of the WCC (World Council of Churches — RUpor) were dispatched agents of the KGB organs ‘Magister’ and ‘Mikhailov.’ These agents exerted a favorable influence on the Council’s work and presented materials of operational interest about the situation in the WCC and characterizing data on individual figures. (…) Deputy chief of the 4th department of the 5th Directorate of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Lieutenant Colonel Fitsev.”

The special ruling of the Supreme Council commission also stated: “The commission draws the attention of the ROC leadership to the anticonstitutional use by the CPSU Central Committee and USSR KGB organs of a number of church bodies for their own purposes through the recruitment and infiltration of KGB agents into them. Thus, through the Department for External Church Relations, agents designated by the code names ‘Svyatoslav,’ ‘Alamant,’ ‘Mikhailov,’ ‘Topaz,’ ‘Nesterovich,’ ‘Kuznetsov,’ ‘Ognev,’ ‘Esaulenko’ and others traveled abroad and carried out assignments of the KGB leadership. The nature of the assignments they performed testifies to the inseparability of the said Department from the state, to its transformation into a covert center of KGB agents among believers.”

Gundyaev’s hobbies are atypical for church circles — he is a fan of alpine skiing (for which he bought himself a sizable house in Switzerland), purebred dogs, water skiing, and high-speed driving.

According to journalists of Ogoniok, Kirill “has been linked for 30 years by the warmest relations” with Lydia Mikhailovna Leonova, the daughter of the cook of the Leningrad regional committee of the CPSU.

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