Marta Allevato

The NGO, recently branded a 'foreign agent’ by Russian authorities, posted online a database with about 40,000 names of agents who took part in Stalin’s Great Terror. The descendants of some perpetrators have apologised to those of the victims; others, fearing revenge, want the database blocked. For one analyst, Russia has to undergo “a third wave of de-Stalinisation” since this page of history cannot be turned without repentance.

A meeting with Card. Koch at Danilovsky Monastery in Moscow. Rebuilding churches and returning the religious life of Syria to normal. Unite the two anti-terrorism coalitions fighting in the Middle East. The Pope donates some relics of St. Francis of Assisi. A reception in the presence of Putin closes the celebrations for the birthday of the Orthodox Patriarch.

The Russian Orthodox primate yesterday celebrated his birthday with an exhibition, gifts and special TV programme. President Putin sent him a telegram and revealed that he was probably baptised by the patriarch’s father.

Interview with hieromonk Stefan (Igumnov), secretary for relations between Christians from the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations. The recent agreement on the primacy and synodality signed in Chieti. The difficulties of the pan-Orthodox Synod. The memory and the value of embrace between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill in Havana.

On 18 September, Russians vote to renew the lower house of their parliament. In Sergiyev Posad, also known as the Orthodox Vatican, a young candidate backed by the Parnas party challenges the local district chief who is a member of Putin’s United Russia party. Despite unequal chances, for the opposition it is important to run since it is the “only way to be known” and overcome voters’ apathy towards politics.

The Muslim minority has taken up the tradition of collective prayers in private homes, to circumvent the prohibitions imposed by the Russian authorities on public gatherings. The last big meeting was at the home of Ilmi Umerov, the leader who has been targeted by the FSB. His daughter: "There has been a return of the use of repressive psychiatry against dissidents, just like under the USSR".

The Synod of the Russian Church has decided not to participate in pan-Orthodox gathering, which should open this week. Now all await Phanar response. According to some commentators, the rivalry between Kirill and Bartholomew I is at the root of the problem: for Russians, Constantinople is seeking hegemony in the Orthodox world, and supports the creation of a Ukrainian Church independent from the Moscow Patriarchate.

In the footsteps of Bulgaria, Antioch and Georgia now the Patriarchate of Serbia says it is in favor of postponing Crete gathering. Meanwhile, Moscow does not send its representative to the preparatory work of the Council’s final document, and on June 13 will decide its official position.

Metropolitan Hilarion: "shocked" by Constantinople’s refusal to hold an extraordinary preconciliar meeting to resolve the issues raised by the local churches. "The decisions of the Council shall be taken by unanimous consent and that is not possible if some Churches are missing".

After the Bulgarian and Georgian Churches and the Patriarchate of Antioch raised some issues, Moscow proposed a pre-Council meeting on 10 June, which in turn led to concerns that the Council in Crete might be postponed. For the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate, Moscow might now send a low-level delegation, headed by Hilarion, not Patriarch Kirill.

Sergei Chapnin, former editor of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, holds this view. In a recent public statement, the bishop and rector of the Sretensky Theological Seminary said that most Orthodox do not view sympathetically dialogue with Catholics, and that most do not see "any real future in the idea of Church ecumenism."

The director of the Chornobyl Museum in Kyiv calls for action to help the “people who still live in the contaminated area and who have been abandoned." Meanwhile, nature is reclaiming its due as wildlife repopulates the Exclusion Zone. A new huge sarcophagus is set to secure the reactor that blew up.