Moscow Orthodox Leaders Met with Russian Officials Far More Often in 2023-2024 than Earlier But Continues to Lose Parishioners. ‘Vyorstka’ Finds

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 6 – On the basis of an examination of 11,000 press releases from the Moscow Patriarcahte, the Vyorstka news service determined that senior Orthodox churchmen met senior Russian officials far more often in the last two years than earlier but that this did not prevent a decline in the number of Russians identifying as Orthodox.
    In 2023, Patriarch Kirill met with heads of federal subjects twice as  often as he had the year before, largely because he and other churchmen were lobbying for abortion bans and an expanded role for the church in government propaganda (verstka.media/kak-vyroslo-vliyanie-rpcz-na-rossiyan-v-god-semi).
    But the interaction between senior churchmen and senior government officials was not limited to the very top. When Vyorstka considered meetings between metropolitans and heads of synod departments and all senior officials, it found that there were 265 in 2023 alone and roughly the same number in 2024, far outstripping the numbers in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
    The government obviously welcomed the church’s contribution, but the church’s hardlines on many issues, including abortion, put many Russians off; and the share of Russians identifying as Orthodox Christians declined throughout this period, a trend that suggests working so closely with the  government may be counterproductive as far as the church is concerned.