Kazan diocese. Religious scholar Roman Silantiev commented on the situation of Orthodox Christians in Tatarstan Tatarstan Metropolis

P.S. The Lord is essentially right,
but the key to the hearts of completely non-church students
chosen incorrectly.

October 29th, 2016

"Hegumen Silouan, the former abbot of the Assumption Monastery in Sviyazhsk, will leave the Kazan diocese. Today he officially transferred affairs to a new abbot. Thus ended the conflict between the authoritative priest and Metropolitan Feofan. Let us recall that on October 19, Father Silouan received a decision on his temporary removal, and in his place he was appointed Hieromonk Ambrose. The news caused a serious resonance not only among the Orthodox, but also among non-religious people. It got to the point that supporters of the disgraced clergyman were going to go to a rally as a sign of disagreement with the metropolitan’s style of government, but then it became known that they decided to cancel the action...

– What conclusions did you draw after this whole story? You saw that a lot of people supported you, but at the same time you realized that you were left alone with the system...

– I don’t want to say that I was left alone with the system; I knew perfectly well what I was getting into when I became a priest. What I fundamentally disagree with is the fact that the abbots of churches and monasteries can be so easily swapped. It is very difficult. First of all, it is difficult for parishioners. Perhaps someday the time will really come when the brethren will choose the abbots. At least, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill is moving towards this; reforms of monasticism are now being prepared.

What about the conclusions? Well, it turns out that people need me a lot more than I suspected. I came to the conclusion that you need to rely only on God, and not on human help, not on your own deeds. And when there is God’s providence, it is difficult to resist it. ()

October 28th, 2016

“Patriarch Kirill has his own “golden personnel fund,” whose representatives not only strive to reproduce the royal lifestyle of their ruler (down to palaces, airplanes and personal guards), but also have a certain immunity. They consider themselves representatives of the new Russian elite and even form a special philosophy - hedonism based on the ideas of personal chosenness by God.Today our story is about one of the most prominent representatives of the patriarchal “personnel reserve” - Metropolitan Feofan of Kazan and Tatarstan, against whom his own flock - with the consent of the authorities of the republic - is gathering a large-scale rally on October 30.
Didn’t take into account the specifics of the region...

A whole bunch of complaints against the new Metropolitan of Kazan and Tatarstan Feofan (Ashurkov) was received at the last meeting of the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, which took place on October 21 in the Moscow Danilov Monastery. ()

October 20th, 2016

The saga of Metropolitan Feofan Ashurkov:
didn’t cut a single word -
almost a folk epic:

"A feast during the plague of modern times
From the new diary

“No one can serve two masters...
You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Gospel of Matthew (6:24)

Introduction

Archpastor
The archpastor - by succession of power from the holy apostles, is the head of the local church - the diocese, canonically governing it with the conciliar assistance of the clergy and laity.

Charter of the Russian Orthodox Church

Think about it, dear reader, what lofty words - according to the succession of power from the holy apostles. And how democratically it is declared - the manager with the conciliar assistance of the clergy and laity.

In times preceding us, the holy saints of God, in view of the feat of life they endured - love for God and neighbor, developed in the minds of the people, a respectful address in the simplest and closest form - father or priest.

In our time, Church protocol requires the following address to the archpastors of the Russian Orthodox Church - Your Eminence Metropolitan so-and-so or so: Your Eminence Vladyka so-and-so...

Without disputing the form of address to the elected and high-ranking gentlemen of the church organization of our time, let us ask ourselves about the dignity of modern hierarchs. How we see them. What are they like in matters of faith and what are the fruits of their pastoral ministry?

“For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.”

Epistle of James (2:26)

So that we have something to start from when discussing this issue, let us cite the words of the ascetic of piety, St. Seraphim of Sarov, explaining the expression of the Apostle James. “Faith without works is dead; and the works of faith are: love, peace, long-suffering, mercy, humility, bearing the cross and living in the spirit. Only such faith is imputed to the truth.” Let us accept this as a kind of measure of righteousness.

Part 1

about our lord... and father

So, get acquainted.

Ivan Andreevich Ashurkov, born May 21, 1947, native of the mountains. Dmitriev, Kursk region, RSFSR, USSR. From available official sources: no previous convictions, never married, officially has no heirs, and has not been found in any discreditable relationships. Since 1973 he has been a monk under the name Theophanes. Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, currently Metropolitan of Kazan and Tatarstan. ()

October 20th, 2016

“In the Orthodox community of Tatarstan, the atmosphere is heating up in connection with the activities of Metropolitan Feofan Ashurkov, who was appointed to this position some time ago by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church MP Kirill Gundyaev without consultation with the leadership of the republic.

The Voice of Islam has written more than once that Muslims and simply Tatar patriots are dissatisfied with Ashurkov’s activities. In particular, his words that “Kazan is a Russian land”, and the inhabitants of Tatarstan (regardless of their religion) are “under the protection of the Holy Mother of God”, and the publication of the Bible in the Tatar language with Muslim terminology, designed to appeal to Muslims, also caused rejection into Orthodoxy, and attempts to remove the Kryashen schools from subordination to the Republic and subordinate them to the Russian Orthodox Church, and much more.

In general, one must understand that Ashurkov is the special forces of the “Parallel State of Kirill”, thrown into Tatarstan to seize it and turn it into the Kazan province, as ROC propagandists explicitly said. ()

October 19th, 2016

"Directed by: Patriarch Kirill and the Holy Synod

Call on Metropolitan Feofan for order and an end to lawlessness in the Kazan diocese!

"Your Holiness!!!

Dear members of the Holy Synod!!!

The lawless rule of Metropolitan Theophan in the Kazan Diocese forced me to turn to you.

During the time that Metropolitan Theophan headed the Kazan Diocese, many unpleasant events happened with his immediate “leadership”. Thus, Metropolitan Theophan indiscriminately, guided only by personal sympathies and antipathies, began to expel employees of churches, monasteries, and farmsteads, regardless of the fact that these people worked for the good of the Church. Many of the employees expelled by Metropolitan Theophan worked in these places for many years, often starting their work for the good of the Church from the very ruins of a particular temple or monastery. And many of them had no other place to go and where to lay their heads.

It is no longer a secret to anyone in our Diocese that the Orthodox Faith and rank have become a kind of “business” for the Metropolitan. Unofficial fees were collected from almost all parishes and monasteries, as they said, for the bishop's house. Now in the village. Petrovsky in Kazan stands a luxurious mansion that in no way fits with the image of the modest archpastor and unmercenary Metropolitan Theophan. This mansion was registered in the name of the wife of the Metropolitan’s secretary, Tatyana Samoilenko. But after the previous letter addressed to you, the above-mentioned mansion was re-registered to the Kazan Diocese. At least the Church benefited from this.

As for the services of Metropolitan Theophan, not one of them has yet passed without shouting, swearing and showdowns on the part of the metropolitan. Swearing and screaming can be heard from him even during the Divine Liturgy. (October 14th, 2016

Another scandal in the Kazan Metropolitanate.

A few quotes from the article “Battle for Sviyazhsk...”:

“Together with the signatures (in addition to the parishioners, the clergy also signed the document - about 20 people in total) a public appeal will be sent to the Holy Synod and to the reception of Patriarch Kirill.

The BUSINESS Online correspondent managed to get acquainted with the document, which includes two parts. The second is more specific and contains specific requests both to the synod and to His Holiness the Patriarch himself. The authors of the letter, who also gave additional explanations to BUSINESS Online, claim that under Feofan the diocesan tax has increased significantly, that the sale of church candles and other utensils has been centralized, and their prices have been increased. They demand financial audits of the activities of both the entire metropolitanate and Tatyana Samoilenko (diocesan treasurer), Archpriest Vladimir Samoilenko (metropolitan secretary) and the head of the Tatarstan metropolitan Feofan himself.

In total, as of May of this year, according to our interlocutors, 28 Tatarstan influential and not so influential clergy lost their positions.

However, the authors of the appeal to the synod and to the patriarch are not limited to individual complaints about the decisions of Metropolitan Theophan - they strive to show that almost all of his activities are “vicious” and lead to a “disastrous path.” This is the subject of the first part of the open letter.

Thus, the metropolitan’s ill-wishers claim that his acquaintance with most of the employees of parish churches and monastery farmsteads almost always turned out to be unpleasant and that Feofan allegedly kicked out many of the “servants” at the first meeting. The authors of the appeal also talk about the parking lot for ministers and parishioners of one of the monasteries being closed by the ruling bishop personally. “He did not drive out the soulless cars, but the people in those cars,” the letter says. Unfortunately, it is not specified which monastery we are talking about.

“During his tenure at the Kazan see, Metropolitan Theophan, in both word and deed, brought down the ideal of pastoral service to its extreme limits. We hope that the choice of such behavior was made by him independently and his activities in the post of the Russian Orthodox Church, and especially not of a systemic nature within the organization,” write the authors of the letter.

Finally, one of the most interesting details of this part of the message, dedicated to the Metropolitan’s lifestyle, is information about a house with an area of ​​2.5 thousand square meters. m in the village of Petrovsky. Allegedly, this house de facto belongs to Metropolitan Feofan, although according to documents, since October 2015 it has been owned by the already mentioned Samoilenko, the wife of the secretary of the head of the Tatarstan Metropolis. The cost of the mansion, according to the BUSINESS Online interlocutor, is about 150 million rubles.

However, on this matter, as our publication’s interlocutors assure, the administration of the President of the Republic of Tajikistan can provide all comprehensive explanations if necessary. And Patriarch Kirill is unlikely to be shocked by the story about Petrovsky, which he personally visited during his recent visit to Kazan last summer.

“A FEW PERSONNEL DECISIONS WILL NOT CHANGE ANYTHING. THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING"

During the visit, they presented the patriarch with an appeal to recall the metropolitan from the management of the Kazan department, that is, the entire metropolis, and called his methods of work “increasing anxiety and tension in society.” They called the head of the Tatarstan Metropolis himself “emotionally and mentally unbalanced.”

“It’s rare that a service with his participation takes place without shouting and scandal. He finds fault with everything with or without reason,” says the address to Patriarch Kirill. At the same time, the authors of the appeal note general public indignation at Feofan’s proposal to transfer one of the buildings of the presidential residence in the Kremlin to the Tatarstan Metropolitanate: “In the manner of communication, in the form of communication, the metropolitan evokes among Tatarstan residents direct and ambiguous associations with a security officer from Stalin’s times.”

There has been no official reaction to this appeal (by the way, signed not personally, but “from the Orthodox believers of the Republic of Tatarstan”)..."

The authorities of Tatarstan still do not provide schoolchildren with the opportunity to study “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture” as part of the course “Fundamentals of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics” (ORKSE). The news of this caused bewilderment to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus':

“There is also a “unique”, one might say, region - Tatarstan, where the regional authorities consider it possible for people to decide what they can study within the framework of ORKSE and what they cannot. OPK - impossible. At the same time, civil rights and the requirements of federal legislation are grossly violated, decisions of the President, the Government, and the Ministry of Education and Science are ignored,” said His Holiness Patriarch Kirill in an interview published in the 11th issue of the Orthodox Education magazine.

The head of the Tatarstan President’s Department for Domestic Policy, Alexander Terentyev, called the words about the oppression of Orthodoxy in the Republic of Tatarstan “lamentations” and demonstrated at a meeting on issues of interethnic and interfaith relations a number of data indicating, in his opinion, the development of Orthodoxy in the region. Thus, in 1998 there were only 15 Orthodox sites in Tatarstan, but now there are 467 (324 churches, 46 houses of worship, 86 chapels and 11 prayer rooms); At the moment, there are 334 Orthodox religious organizations in the republic, and in 1998 there were only 15. In addition, 26 Orthodox churches are under reconstruction in the region, and another 35 are under construction.

“Numbers are stubborn things. You can't argue with them. Could this be stated in a case of harassment? It’s time for everyone to give an honest answer to this question,” Interfax-Volga region quotes A. Terentyev.

“Indeed, numbers are a stubborn thing. And they do not testify at all in favor of Tatarstan.

There are no longer regions in Russia where terrorists would attack Orthodox churches en masse. There are no regions in Russia where, over the past 2014, the increase in terrorist crimes was 320%, with a general downward trend in their number, as stated by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic, Artem Khokhorin, in January.

With an equal ratio of Orthodox and Muslims in Tatarstan, the number of mosques exceeds the number of temples by more than three times. The authorities of the republic are building mosques outside its borders, but for some reason they are not building Orthodox churches. We are happy for the Muslims of Tatarstan and consider them our friends, but we would like to see the same attitude towards the Orthodox from the authorities of the republic.

In Tatarstan, it is still impossible to choose “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture,” and His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, speaking about this, is not engaged in “lamentations,” but directly points to the arbitrariness of local officials who place someone’s position above Russian law. And we will raise this topic time after time at all levels until we achieve respect for the rights of children from Orthodox families.”

“Since the end of 2013, when the VRNS Human Rights Center held a round table on violations of the rights of the Russian and Orthodox population of Tatarstan, the situation has definitely improved, but has not become completely normal. And we need to work on improving it, and not snap at criticism,” Roman Silantiev also said.

Let us add that we all remember the wave of Kryashen churches that swept across Tatarstan in 2013. All this was so serious that the Kryashens - a Turkic people professing Orthodoxy - were forced to turn to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill for help:

“Terrorists are burning our churches. Thank God, the arsonists were found, but we are not sure that this will not happen again. We are not sure about the future. There have already been cases when Wahhabis came to Orthodox priests and agitated them to convert to Islam. They don't know who to complain to. They are afraid that they will immediately be accused of Islamophobia,” in an open appeal from the head of the public organization of the Kryashens of Kazan, Maria Semenova.

And in December 2014, in Kazan, a monument church in honor of the Image of the Savior Not Made by Hands, built on the site of a mass grave of soldiers who fell during the capture of Kazan in October 1552. On the columns of the temple, the vandals made three inscriptions in red paint: “Why did you baptize our children,” “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten,” and “1552.”

Initially it included the lands of the Kazan Khanate, the surrounding areas conquered in 1552 and the Vyatka land. In 1556, after the capture of Astrakhan, the lands of the Middle and Lower Volga region became part of the diocese; in the second half of the 16th - early 17th centuries. — annexed territories of the Urals and Siberia.

In 1602, the Astrakhan dioceses were separated from the diocese, in 1620 - the Tobolsk dioceses, and in 1657 - the Vyatka dioceses. In the first half of the 18th century. The diocese mainly included the territories of the Kazan and Ufa provinces created by Peter I. By the mid-1790s. the diocese included the Kazan and Simbirsk provinces; parishes on the territory of the latter were later allocated to the Simbirsk diocese.

In the early 1920s. The borders of the diocese were brought into line with the new administrative-territorial division of the Volga region. The Kazan diocese included the Tatar, Chuvash (until 1946), and Mari ASSR (until 1993).

By the decision of the Holy Synod of June 6, 2012 (), dioceses were also separated from the diocese. The Kazan diocese is included in the Tatarstan Metropolitanate.

Diocese today
(as of July 2016)

Deaneries and deaneries

• I Kazanskoe (within the boundaries of the Vakhitovsky and Privolzhsky districts of the city of Kazan) - Archpriest Alexy Chubakov, rector of the Church of Yaroslavl Wonderworkers in Kazan
• II Kazanskoe (within the boundaries of the Kirov and Moskovsky districts of the city of Kazan) - abbot Pimen (Iventiev)
• III Kazanskoe (within the boundaries of the Aircraft Building and Novo-Savinovsky districts of the city of Kazan) - abbot Ignatius (Grigoriev)
• IV Kazanskoye (within the boundaries of the Sovetsky district of the city of Kazan) - Archpriest Vladimir Ponomarev
• Buinskoe - Archpriest John Tkachuk, rector of the Trinity Church in Buinsk
• Verkhne-Uslonskoye - Priest Vladimir Chibirev, rector of the Nikolo-Ilyinskaya Church of the r.p. Verkhniy Uslon
• Vysokogorskoye - priest Vitaly Ulyanov, rector of the church in honor of the Holy Trinity. Estates
• Yelabuga - Archpriest Sergiy Lepikhin, rector of the Intercession Cathedral in Yelabuga
• Zakamsky - Archpriest Andrey Dubrovin, rector of the Holy Ascension Bishop's Compound in Naberezhnye Chelny
• Zelenodolsk - Archpriest Svyatoslav Mirganiev, rector of the Peter and Paul Church in Zelenodolsk, village. Gary
• Kaybitskoe - priest Nikolai Ermolaev, rector of the Trinity Church in the village. Turminskoe
• Kukmorskoe - Archpriest Sergiy Eliseev, rector of the Church of Peter and Paul r.p. Kukmor
• Laishevskoye - priest Fyodor Saparov, rector of the Church of the Kazan Saints. Column
• Mamadyshskoe - Archpriest Dimitry Morozov, rector of the Church of St. Xenia of Rome in Mamadysh
• Pestrechinskoye - Priest Pavel Kirillov, rector of the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Panovka
• Rybno-Slobodskoye - priest Alexander Maslov, rector of the Epiphany Church in the village. Anatysh
• Tetyushskoye - Archpriest Valentin Kostrin, rector of the Trinity Church in Tetyushi