Moscow (AsiaNews) -  The best way to elect a new Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia is a secret ballot between three candidates.  It was announced by metropolitan Kirill (see photo), the current locum tenens of Moscow orthodoxy, ahead of the January 27th Synod when Alexi II’s successor and the sixteenth patriarch of Moscow will be decided.

The 62 year-old metropolitan of Smolensk spoke on behalf of the Holy Synod explaining that the secret ballot would “guarantee that each person can vote in secret according to their con science”.  The formula indicated by Kirill for the election of the head of the Holy Synod is not new to Moscow Orthodoxy. Already in 1917 three candidates were chosen from which the Patriarch was elected by a drawing of lots.  In 1990, the year of Alexi II’s election, the choice was made from between two candidates who had gathered most consensuses.

 The secret ballot is the preferred choice of the conservatives and Kirill, among the possible successors, has underlined that this will allow them “to maintain the purity of our hearts and intentions, so that suspicion and enmity will not destroy our inner peace and we can preserve our abilities to hear the voice of God”.

The Synod, which opens January 27th in the Church of the Savoir in Moscow, 700 delegates are expected to gathered, representing the 156 diocese and foreign communities.  Each diocesan delegation will include a cleric, a monk and a lay person and will be joined by representatives from seminaries and patriarchal female monasteries.  The synod will be coordinated by a commission of 29 people, composing religious and lay.