ARCHIVE:

Archbishop Mark (Arndt) of Berlin and Germany

A House of Worship or a Den of Thieves?

On the Nativity of Christ, Yasser Arafat invited a number of Orthodox patriarchs to Bethlehem.  At a joint service arranged by invitation of the secular authorities, they met the new year, 2000.  Only the Serbian Patriarch, Pavel, did not attend this display due to a sudden illness.  A week later, January 2/15, 2000, Palestinian soldiers upon orders of Arafat evicted our monks and pilgrims from the metochion (podvorye) of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) in Jericho.  The order was in answer to a “friendly” request made by the Moscow Patriarch, Alexy II, during his visit to Bethlehem.  Most of the monastics arrested in Jericho were in danger for the second time.  They had been ruthlessly beaten in July, 1997, to please the Moscow Patriarch and were driven out of the Holy Trinity monastery at Abraham’s Oak in Hebron.

On the Eve of Nativity, the angels in Bethlehem heralded peace to the world.  The Moscow Patriarch, for the second time, brought strife, ill will and injury to the native land of God (as did his predecessor, Alexy I, who allowed similar lawlessness in the Holy Land in 1948).

The hierarchy of the Moscow Patriarchy once again clearly showed its lack of freedom.  Apparently, the MP still remains a captive of the government.  Willingly or not does not even matter.  Not once did they approach us in a civilized way to resolve the question of property.  Not once was a reasonable resolution to the problem proposed.  Not once was there an offer for a joint resolution of not only the property issues , but also all the other serious matters.  We do, though, believe in the power of repentance, and pray, especially now, before the start of Great Lent, that our All-Merciful God grant this to those who continue to follow old habits and prefer words of strife to words of love.  May the transfiguring Word of God transform all of us with Its Theanthropic language.

It became clear after the seizure of our metochion (podvorye), that this effort was being directed by representatives of the Russian consulate, headed by the General Consul (see the chronology of events in Jericho provided below).  Apparently, our metochion (podvorye) in Jericho must become a property of the state just like the garden of the Palestine Society, which was expropriated by Arafat two years ago, also under the pretense of returning it to the Moscow Patriarchy.

And so, the Moscow Patriarchy is clearly not a free entity.  It is a governmental agency, a obedient slave of an atheistic government that cannot tolerate that monks and nuns pray calmly for peace on earth.  In Russia, these forces have destroyed thousands and thousands of churches, killed millions of people, and defiled our holy objects.  The Moscow Patriarchy not only excused all of this, but also justified it by its silence and the lie that there is no persecution of the Church.  Today, this sorrowful page of history has become a exportable commodity.  Today, far from the borders of the Russian land, in a country with only a pretense of being independent and which is unfamiliar with the basic principles of justice, unrestrained lawlessness reigns, developed and refined by decades of atheistic terror.

Once again, the representatives of the Moscow Patriarchy not only look on in silence, but also actively participate in these shameful acts.  Blatant lawlessness, shamelessly resorting to terrorist methods, reigns at the behest, and with the help and support, of the organization that calls itself the Moscow Patriarchy.  It has gotten to the point, that even the MP “Minister of Foreign Affairs,” Metropolitan Kirill Gundyaev, came to Jericho personally to assess the expropriated (in Russian you can say “stolen”) parcel of land.  It is so important for the atheistic thieves and robbers to damage and destroy this obedience to prayer, which has lasted throughout the “Soviet” era on this tiny parcel of land in the Holy Land, to deny the right to live there to the monks and nun who, during all the decades of the reign of atheism, found a place for the sake of preserving the holy objects of the Russian Church.

One can only pity the millions of simple and trusting Russian people who have no choice and therefore pray in the churches belonging to the organization which calls itself the Moscow Patriarchy.  Arafat’s invitation to join with a terrorist organization, which the MP has revealed itself to be, can only be considered as cynicism and mockery.

We will continue to entreat God to grant peace to the Church.  This current outrage by evil forces serves only as an affirmation of the righteousness of our path.  Even if the anti-Christian servants deny us one last free refuge on Earth where we can pray, we will continue to pray to God to grant freedom – internal and external – to the long-suffering Russian Orthodox people, their true clerics (whichever part of the Russian Church they may belong to), and to all those who yearn for a honest Christian life.

Archbishop Mark,

Overseer of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem

Jerusalem, January-February 2000.