The passing of Archbishop Pitirim, champion of “popular Orthodoxy”

One of the most popular figures in the Orthodox Church, he died at the age of 65. A writer and poet, he was among those who championed Putin and the war in Ukraine, but was disliked by Patriarch Kirill. Pitirim became bishop of the capital of Komi in 1995, at the age of 34. His style was very popular for its informal communication, especially with young people. His odes were examples of Russia's “obedience to destiny”.

One of the most popular figures in the Russian Orthodox Church, the archbishop of Syktyvkar in the northern republic of Komi, Pitirim (Voločkov), died suddenly at the age of 65. He was a writer and poet, author of hymns and songs on various subjects, and in recent years he devoted himself in particular to Vladimir Putin and the “special military operation” in Ukraine, which made him even more famous, despite being one of the hierarchs least tolerated by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.

He was called “the archpastor of all the Komi”, a parody of the patriarchal title for the northern region, which in the 14th century had been the symbol of the evangelisation of northern Russia's Finno-Ugric ethnic groups during the revival of monasticism by St Sergius of Radonezh and his disciple St Stephen of Perm, apostle of the Komi. In the Orthodox blogosphere, no one believed the news of his death at a relatively young age, especially given his great vitality, which permeated social networks. Even his secretary, Archimandrite Filipp (Filippov), denied the reports until the very end, assuring that “His Excellency had been taken away by ambulance but would soon recover”, before finally conceding to the definitive news of his heart attack. Pitirim had never complained about his health, was always cheerful and active, always looking much younger than his age, with a beard and brown hair without a single grey hair, and a big smile for everyone.

The day before his death, he had spoken at a concert in Syktyvkar, for the umpteenth celebration of the start of the Great Patriotic War. With his “creative approach”, Pitirim had proposed a new version of the history of 22 June 1941, far removed from the factual truth, according to which, in the clash with the Nazis that day “about 100,000 inhabitants of Kiev” out of a population of 900,000 had died, as “divine punishment for supporting the armies of the devil”, when it is well known that Hitler's assault did not meet any real opposition until it reached the three great capitals of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad. After the demonstration, the archbishop celebrated the Divine Liturgy, proclaiming with great emotion a homily on the Russian saints whose remains are displayed for the devotion of the faithful, concluding that “we are children of God, and can children be happy when there is a dead man in a coffin in the room? Of course they can, if the dead man is a saint or a hero!”.

Pitirim was called the “fragrant bishop” because of the enormous success of his song “Orthodoxy as a fragrance” (Pravoslavie – Blagoukhanie), in which the Orthodox faithful are compared to the repentant tax collector praying before the hypocritical Pharisee who believes himself to be superior to everyone else, in a paradoxical reversal of roles in the comparison between the religious confessions. His career began at a very young age as an altar boy and secretary to the bishop of Krasnodar in southern Russia, Germogen (Orekhov), one of the leaders of the nikodimtsy group, followers of the Metropolitan of Leningrad Nikodim (Rotov), the main architect of the compromise between the Russian Church and the Communist Party during the Leonid Brezhnev period, whose most eminent heir is the current Patriarch Kirill.

Germogen continued his career in countries of particular importance to Soviet politics, such as Syria, Israel and Switzerland, while the young Pavel (Pitirim's baptismal name) became a deacon at the age of 22, then a monk Pitirim the following year and ordained a “hieromonk” in 1987, still in the Soviet era but already during the Gorbachev changes, and sent to serve in the Komi Republic. The young age of monks and priests was a characteristic of the Nikodimites, and Kirill himself had become bishop in 1976 at the age of only 29, spreading this practice to his own collaborators, which has always fuelled much suspicion about the relations between the members of this particular ecclesiastical caste.

Pitirim himself eventually became bishop of the Komi capital in 1995, at the age of 34. His style immediately became very popular, due to his informal communication with the people and especially with young people, which aroused strong aversion towards him on the part of the then Metropolitan Kirill (Gundjaev), who was responsible for external relations of the Patriarchate.

When Patriarch Kirill organised the administrative reform of the episcopal sees in 2010, Komi remained the only region in the European part of the Russian Federation not to be transformed into a metropolis, and Pitirim remained the only bishop of the dominant generation of the 1990s not to rise to the rank of metropolitan. It was only in 2016 that he was promoted from bishop to archbishop, and in that same year he was also accepted into the Union of Russian Writers, establishing himself as an exceptional figure in the ecclesiastical and cultural landscape.

If Kirill represents the classic “political Orthodoxy” in the relationship between the Church and the state in Russia, and the Metropolitan of Crimea, Tikhon (Shevkunov), Putin's “spiritual father”, is the leading exponent of “ideological Orthodoxy” which justifies Russia's imperial claims as “Moscow-Third Rome”, Archbishop Pitirim was rather the champion of “popular Orthodoxy”, able to express the feelings of ordinary people, who see in the Church the possibility of giving meaning to the thousand contradictions of history and politics. Upon joining the Writers' Union, he published an “Ode to Putin”, extolling his talents and divine protection:

The prayer of the president / St. John of Kronstadt did not forget / with the Faces of the Trinity in his room / he welcomed and blessed him. / St. Ljubov of Victory, St. Irene / with the glorious names of victory and peace / and St. Tatiana, guardian of life / all of them protected our Putin.

At the beginning of the Svo in Ukraine, Pitirim was the most outspoken Orthodox hierarch in proclaiming Putin's “divine mission”, presenting him as the “leader and prophet of the people” chosen directly by God, and demanding that Patriarch Kirill celebrate his coronation:

We are together with our president. / Living in Russia with him is a blessing. / To be with Christ in intellect and honour / and to love Russia with all our hearts... / Our Putin guides us like Moses, / he keeps the Spirit of Christ in his heart. / God is strong in him, a marvellous counsellor! / May the president be given the crown, the sword and the shield.

It is difficult to say how sincere these expressions are, as they resemble a self-parody typical of the excesses of the Russian spirit, capable of exalting itself and appearing ironic at the same time. Pitirim's odes are a true example of Russia's “obedience to destiny”, always recited and sung with particular emphasis and joy, dancing rhythmically to make them a spectacle open to any interpretation, which truly corresponds to the “popular consensus” of Russians towards their tsar and their religion. In 2016, Sergei Galikov, former president of Olimpstroj, the company that built the pharaonic structures for the Sochi Olympics, one of Putin's great dreams of universal glory, was also appointed governor of Komi, and the archbishop found a perfect companion for his elegiac songs.

Pitirim himself had a high opinion of his poetic talents: “God has given me a spiritual horn / its sound gathers his beloved children in church... / My horn resounds in verse / and people are happy beyond measure / it calls the dying to the Saviour / and life is granted to them for the joy of the whole earth”. He disseminated his works mainly through the leading Russian social network VKontakte, although many poems can be found on the official website for writers Stikhi.ru, and it is estimated that he composed over three thousand. His rooms were adorned with bright colours, especially pink, and were always filled with aromas that confirmed his hymn to the “fragrance of Orthodoxy”, the “pop” version of a religiosity that was more natural than revealed, more popular than canonical, more paradoxical than apocalyptic:

The aroma recreates me as a happy being, / the aroma is the refined word of Christ, / the lion with the golden mane scrutinises the heart / the halo shines on his head. / The aroma reproduces the melody / Hallelujah! – sing with me, the supreme Soul. / The spirit that breathes knows me / and flies towards Him when Christ calls.

Pitirim translated ultra-conservative narratives through a tangle of fantasies and self-reflections, criticising the former head of the patriarchate's foreign affairs department, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev), for his “Masonic ecumenism”, and was not afraid to show the true face of the Russian world, that of the uncontrollable soul of the suburbs, without fear of marginalisation by the top echelons of ecclesiastical and state power. Russia is in reality an immense and unique suburb without borders, and any attempt to define it in comprehensible dimensions ends up dispersing in the “fragrance of the Supreme Soul”.

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