Controversy over Pühtitsa Female Monastery in Estonia Raises Possibility Moscow Patriarchate Might Extend Stauropegial Status to Maintain ROC MP Influence Abroad

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 13 – Tallinn’s insistence that not only the Estonian Orthodox Church break with Moscow but also that the female Orthodox monastery at Pühtitsa which has stauropegial status has raised the possibility that the Moscow Patriarchate might seek to use that status as a defense against moves to autocephaly in former Soviet republics.
    The struggle between the Estonian government and the EOC has attracted the most attention because the EOC has agreed to most of Estonia’s demands that it separate itself from Moscow and thus ends the earlier compromise between Tallinn and Moscow in which there were two recognized Orthodox churches in that Baltic country.
    On the history of this conflict, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/estonian-orthodox-church-of-moscow.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/estonian-orthodox-church-drops-of.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/will-estonia-be-site-of-another.html).
    But what has been viewed as a side issue in this struggle and thus ignored, the status of the women’s Russian Orthodox monastery at Pühtitsa, may in fact turn out to be the most important not only in the preservation of a Moscow role in Orthodoxy in Estonia but  even with regard to Moscow’s defense of its positions in the Orthodox communities elsewhere.
    That is because the Pühtitsa women’s monastery has stauropegial status, an arrangement in Orthodox cannon law whereby a monastery or other community is made subordinate not to the local bishop as is usually the case but to the leader or leadership of the church and thus has greater honor and independence.
    (For a discussion of how this came to be for Pühtitsa, a facility created in 1892 but given that rank only in 1990 by Moscow Patriarch Aleksii who had earlier served as bishop of Talllinn, see ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-12-14--estonskie-vlasti-stavjat-ultimatum-pjuhtickoj-obiteli-porvite-s-moskvoj-77416,).
    In a response to the Estonian government which demanded that Pühtitsa break its ties with Moscow, the monastery’s mother superior not only defended its stauropegial status but told Tallinn that she and her 90 sisters do not even have the right to raise that issue with the Moscow patriarchate (puhtitsa.ee/docs/obrashchenie-29.10.2024.pdf).
    On the one hand, this raises the possibility that Estonia will use force to take control of the women’s monastery, something that would certainly give Tallinn a black eye from the point of view of many Christians. But on the other, this situation has already led to a proposal that Moscow make broader use of this status.
    The Russian Orthodox Chrisma Research Center says that the position the mother superior has taken could be a model for Russian Orthodox communities under pressure in other former Soviet republics and indeed more generally to break ties with Moscow and change allegiance (t.me/chrisma_center/8227).
    In addition to Pühtitsa, the Moscow Patriarchate already has this kind of relationship with monasteries in Belarus, Ukraine, and the United States as well as with individual congregations. Were the ROC MP to adopt the strategy Chrisma proposes, that could radically transform the efforts of post-Soviet states to break Orthodox ties with Moscow.