More on status of break-away Abkhazian group

(Georgian Times) - On Thursday Patriarch Kyril of the Russian Orthodox Church, in deference to the good relations he enjoys with the Georgian Orthodox Church under Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II, declined to accept the request of Abkhazian clergy to recognize a new Abkhazian Orthodox Church under self-styled Patriarch Father Vissarion Aplia.

Earlier in the week, Father Vissarion had formally declared the Sukhum-Abkhazian Diocese of the Georgian Orthodox Church extinct and requested recognition of his new “Abkhazian see” from the Moscow-based Patriarch Kyril, citing the existence of an ancient church that was eliminated when Russia subjugated the Transcaucasus in 1814. On Monday, Archbishop of Volokolamsk Hilarion Alfeyev, the Russian Orthodox Church’s Foreign Relations Department leader, declared in response to the request that a “change of political borders does not necessarily mean that the Church’s canonical borders should also change. That is the basis of our external policy with respect to other Churches.”

Patriarch Ilia II, who served as Bishop and Metropolitan of the Sukhum-Abkhazian Diocese for a decade before succeeding Patriarch David V in Tbilisi at the end of 1977, has maintained cordial ties with Patriarch Kyril. Although he actively sought a halt of the Russian attacks on Georgia proper in the South Ossetian War and supported the “Stop Russia” demonstration a month after the war, and also provided aid to Gori and surrounding villages in the weeks following the Russian advance into central Georgia, he nonetheless also traveled to Russia in December to bid farewell to the deceased Patriarch of All Russia Alexy II. During that trip to Moscow, he met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the first high-level official contact between the two countries since the war, a meeting he hoped would bring peace.

The resulting level of unity between the Georgian and Russian Churches was verbally expressed as recently as on Sept. 8, when Patriarch Kyril declared that “there are no conflicts, even the most cruel, and no human hostility that could ever destroy Church unity, including the unity between the Russian and Georgian Churches. Let’s pray to the Mother of God, heavenly protector of both Russia and Georgia, that relations between the two Orthodox Churches will never be clouded again.”

The Russian Church has demonstrated the sincerity of these sentiments by declining to take what would have been the confrontational step of recognising the Abkhaz Church. A spokesman for Patriarch Ilia II said of Father Vissarion’s declaration, “We do not take this statement seriously. It was made by a group of impostors. Not one of the 15 Orthodox Churches, including the Russian Orthodox Church, recognises the independence of the Abkhaz Church.”

Father Vissarion cited historical sources to legitimise the conversion of the Georgian diocese into an independent Abkhaz Church. The history of the historic Church he referred to began when the Mongols invaded in 1236 and Georgia was split into a closely-controlled eastern half and a loosely-controlled west. A Catholicate emerged in the west, but was considered subordinate to the original Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate at Mtskheta.

When Georgia further disintegrated two centuries later into smaller kingdoms, the Catholicate, based at Kutaisi, became fully independent when King Bagrat VI of Imereti convinced Patriarch Michael IV of Antioch to legitimise it as a new see. The king helped the Patriarch of Antioch to write “The Law of Faith” suggesting that eastern and western Georgia have different histories of conversion and should therefore be considered independent of each other. This was used to justify the resulting schism, despite the church’s earlier 900 years of unity.

A century later, the Turkish invasion of coastal Georgia (Adjara, Lower Guria, and Abkhazia) and subsequent forced conversion of the region to Islam severely weakened the new Catholicate. In the east, the Georgian Patriarchate faced its own problems as the inland Georgians maintained almost constant rebellion against their Persian overlords. Finally in 1783, King Irakli II of Kartli-Kakheti signed the fatal Treaty of Protection at Gurgievsk, drawing the Russians across the Caucasus Mountains, and in return for the protection of Tsarina Catherine II against the Persians and Turks subordinated the Georgian Church to the Russian Holy Synod.

Resistance to this agreement lingered over the next three decades until finally Russia established military control over the entire western Transcaucasus region (present Georgia). In 1814, both the Georgian and Abkhazian Patriarchates were merged into a single exarchate under the Russian Church, an unpopular situation that lasted for over a century.

An independent Abkhazian Catholicate was not reestablished after Patriarch Dositheus Tsereteli submitted his see to the Russian exarchate. When Georgia temporarily separated from Russia in March 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution only the Georgian Orthodox Church re-emerged. It took another five years and three leaders before Georgian Patriarch Ambrose, himself an Abkhaz, managed to achieve international recognition of the independent Georgian Church. An independent Abkhaz Church was not a viable option.

Today Father Vissarion is trying to write the next chapter of this history. Georgian control of Abkhazia’s churches, nominally led by Georgian Orthodox Archbishop Daniel of Sukhum-Abkhazia, was lost during the bitter civil war fought in the first two years after the breakup of the Soviet Union. In the absence of legitimate authority, Father Vissarion established local control of the churches in the breakaway region and organised an independent religious community. He has since filled rebuilt churches and Christian sanctuaries in ancient pagan temples across Abkhazia in what he describes as an “Orthodox renaissance.”

This renaissance turned confrontational in April 2008, when according to the Norwegian human rights organisation Forum 18 the Abkhaz State Security Service evicted without explanation the only Georgian Orthodox priest allowed to minister to ethnic Georgians in Gali, Father Pimen Kardava. Following this expulsion, Father Vissarion sent Russian-speaking Father Matvei Tuzhba to replace him. This arrangement didn’t work out as Georgians refused to attend his services, citing their inability to understand Russian and discomfort in confessing to him. Most ethnic Georgians in Gali claim to attend church only when they cross into Georgian-controlled territory.

After the eviction of Father Kardava from Gali the only area where the legitimate Georgian Church was maintained in Abkhazia was in the Upper Kodori Gorge, where three monks and four nuns ministered to the 150 devout Svans living along the old frontline between the Abkhaz and Georgians. Forum 18 reported that shortly after the valley’s capture last year during the South Ossetia War Father Vissarion, ostensibly intending to carry out a prayer service in the wake of the fighting, visited them at St. George’s Monastery and St. Nino’s Convent in the village of Adjara to discuss “how they could continue here on the territory of the Abkhazian Orthodox Church.” He offered them the choice of renouncing the Georgian Church in favour of the unrecognised Abkhaz Church, becoming “representatives” of the Georgian Church on Abkhazian Orthodox territory (and thereby implicitly recognising the otherwise unrecognised Abkhaz Church) or being evicted from the breakaway republic. None of the monastics paid any attention to Father Vissarion’s offer, so on April 2 he transported the three monks by car to Sukhumi for questioning by the de facto authorities before being expelled from Abkhazia. The nuns followed the next day.

Forum 18 representatives has phoned the self-styled Abkhazian Ministry of Defense Merab Kishmaria, who said that he was the one who had taken the decision to expel the Georgian Orthodox monks and nuns. He also said that he would “kick out anyone who prevents the population from living peacefully,” such as those who “don’t recognise our independent state or our Orthodox leader Father Vissarion,” adding a religious dimension to the conflict between Tbilisi and Sukhumi.

As demonstrated this week, neither the Georgian Patriarch Ilia II nor the Russian Patriarch Kyril takes the view of the Abkhaz Church and civil authorities that there some spiritual benefit, or long-term political benefit, of mixing religion and political conflict.