Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow
Patriarch Alexy II (or Alexius II, Russian: Патриарх Алексий II; secular name Aleksei Mikhailovich Ridiger[1] Russian: Алексе́й Миха́йлович Ри́дигер; 23 February 1929 – 5 December 2008) was the 15th Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Not to be confused with Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia.
Alexy II
Moscow
10 June 1990
5 December 2008
17 April 1950
3 September 1961
by Nikodim of Leningrad
5 December 2008 (aged 79)
Peredelkino, Moscow, Russia
Russian
Vera Alekseeva (1950–1951)
Elected Patriarch of Moscow in 1990, eighteen months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he became the first Russian Patriarch of the post-Soviet period.
Biography[edit]
Early life[edit]
Alexey Ridiger (born Aleksei Rüdiger) was born and spent his childhood in the Republic of Estonia that had become a Russian Orthodox spiritual center and a home to many Russian émigrés after the Russian October Revolution in 1917.[6] He was baptised into the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church.[7]
From his early childhood Alexey Ridiger served in the Orthodox Church under the guidance of his spiritual father, Archpriest Ioann Bogoyavlensky. He attended Tallinn's Russian Gymnasium.
After the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940, Alexey's family was listed for arrest in order to be deported from Estonia according to the Serov Instructions, but were not found by the NKVD because instead of staying in their home they were hiding in a nearby hovel.[8]
During the occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany (1941–1944) Alexey with his father Mikhail, who had become an Orthodox priest on 20 December 1942, visited the Soviet prisoners of war in German prison camps in Estonia. Such activity was tolerated by the German occupational authorities because it was seen as effective anti-Soviet propaganda. After Soviet forces returned to Estonia in the autumn of 1944, unlike most of the people with Baltic German roots, the Ridiger (Rüdiger) family chose to stay in Estonia instead of evacuating to the West.[8]
During the war Joseph Stalin had revived the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union.[9] Having been closed during the war time, after the Soviet annexation of Estonia the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Tallinn was reopened in 1945. Alexey Ridiger, who had become a Soviet citizen[10] served as an altar boy in the cathedral from May to October 1946. He was made a psalm-reader in St. Simeon's Church later that year; in 1947, he officiated in the same office in the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in Tallinn.[1]
Patriarch Alexy II was an honorary member of the Theological Academies in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Crete, Greece. He was made Doctor of Theology honoris causa at the Debrecen Reformed Theological University in Debrecen, Hungary. He also was honored by St. Vladimir's Seminary and St. Tikhon's Seminary an at the Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage in the USA. He was given the title of honorary professor by the Omsk State University and the Moscow State University. He was given an honorary Doctorate of Philology by Saint Petersburg State University. He was given an honorary Doctorate of Theology by the Theological Faculty of the University of Belgrade. He was given an honorary Doctorate of Theology by the Tbilisi Theological Academy in Georgia. He received a Golden Medal from the Faculty of Orthodox Theology of the Kosice University in Kosice, Slovakia, and was an honorary member of the International Charity and Health Foundation.[80]
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