Conflict between Estonian Government and Moscow Church Intensifies

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – The Estonian parliament has adopted a law that requires that what had been the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate not only change its name and end its financial and administrative ties to the Moscow Patriarchate but sever its canonical ones to that church and subordinate itself to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

    Both the Estonian Orthodox Christian Church as the EOC MP is now known as a result of earlier Tallinn actions and the Moscow Patriarchate are outraged at what they both see as unwarranted and illegal state intervention in the religious life of the church and say they cannot and will not agree (ru/faith/2025-04-10/1_9232_lawabiding.html).

    Once the measure is signed into law, the EOCC will have two months to comply. If it doesn’t, its parishes and religious establishment will lose their status as legal persons in Estonia, cease to be able to own property or maintain bank accounts, and the church will be “liquidated” by the Estonian government.

    That will be the definitive end of what had been the Estonian “compromises” under which there have been two Orthodox churches in Estonia since the 1990s, one subordinate to Moscow and one to Constantinople. Many hope that the  EOCC will fuse with the Constantinople church.

    That is possible, but it is also possible that EOCC parishes and bishoprics will go .underground and become a source of new tensions between Moscow and Estonia, with the Moscow Patriarchate leading demands that the Kremlin do something to protect what the Patriarchate believes is part of “the Russian world.”

    On the complex history of Orthodoxy in recent years, a history whose tensions have been exacerbated by Putin’s war in Ukraine, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/01/tallinn-set-to-demand-moscow-church-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/tallinn-pushes-hard-to-end-estonian.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/estonian-orthodox-church-of-moscow.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/01/moscow-patriarchs-policies-making.html.