The welfare of the Orthodox Church rests not only on considerable assistance from the state, the generosity of patrons and donations from the flock - the Russian Orthodox Church also has its own business. But where the earnings are spent is still a secret
The primate of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), Patriarch Kirill, spent half of February on long journeys. Negotiations with the Pope in Cuba, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, landing on Waterloo Island near the Antarctic coast, where Russian polar explorers from the Bellingshausen station live surrounded by Gentoo penguins.
To travel to Latin America The patriarch and about a hundred accompanying people used the Il-96-300 aircraft with tail number RA-96018, which is operated by the Special Flight Detachment “Russia”. This airline is subordinate to the presidential administration and serves the top officials of the state ().
Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill at the Russian Bellingshausen station on the Island of Waterloo (Photo: Press service of the Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church/TASS)
The authorities provide the head of the Russian Orthodox Church not only with air transport: the decree on allocating state security to the patriarch was one of the first decisions of President Vladimir Putin. Three of the four residences - in Chisty Lane in Moscow, Danilov Monastery and Peredelkino - were provided to the church by the state.
However, the ROC's income is not limited to the assistance of the state and big business. The church itself has learned to earn money.
RBC understood how the economy of the Russian Orthodox Church works.
Layered cake
“From an economic point of view, the Russian Orthodox Church is a gigantic corporation that unites tens of thousands of independent or semi-independent agents under a single name. They are every parish, monastery, priest,” he wrote in his book “The Russian Orthodox Church: current state and current problems” sociologist Nikolai Mitrokhin.
Indeed, unlike many public organizations, each parish is registered as a separate legal entity and religious NPO. Church income for conducting rites and ceremonies is not subject to taxation, and proceeds from the sale of religious literature and donations are not taxed. At the end of each year, religious organizations draw up a declaration: according to the latest data provided to RBC by the Federal Tax Service, in 2014 the church’s non-taxable income tax amounted to 5.6 billion rubles.
In the 2000s, Mitrokhin estimated the entire annual income of the Russian Orthodox Church at approximately $500 million, but the church itself rarely and reluctantly talks about its money. At the 1997 Council of Bishops, Patriarch Alexy II reported that the ROC received the bulk of its money from “managing its temporarily free funds, placing them in deposit accounts, purchasing government short-term bonds” and other securities, and from the income of commercial enterprises.
Three years later, Archbishop Clement in an interview with Kommersant-Dengi magazine on the first and last time will tell you what the church economy consists of: 5% of the patriarchate’s budget comes from diocesan contributions, 40% from sponsorship donations, 55% comes from earnings from commercial enterprises of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Now there are fewer sponsorship donations, and deductions from dioceses can amount to a third or about half of the general church budget, explains Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, who until December 2015 headed the department for relations between the church and society.
Church property
The confidence of an ordinary Muscovite in the rapid growth of the number of new Orthodox churches around does not greatly contradict the truth. Since 2009 alone, more than five thousand churches have been built and restored throughout the country, Patriarch Kirill announced these figures at the Council of Bishops in early February. These statistics include both churches built from scratch (mainly in Moscow; see how this activity is financed) and those given to the Russian Orthodox Church under the 2010 law “On the transfer of religious property to religious organizations.”
According to the document, Rosimushchestvo transfers objects to the Russian Orthodox Church in two ways - into ownership or under a free use agreement, explains Sergei Anoprienko, head of the department for the location of federal authorities of Rosimushchestvo.
RBC conducted an analysis of documents on the websites of territorial bodies of the Federal Property Management Agency - over the past four years, the Orthodox Church has received over 270 pieces of property in 45 regions (uploaded until January 27, 2016). The real estate area is indicated for only 45 objects - a total of about 55 thousand square meters. m. The largest object that became the property of the church is the ensemble of the Trinity-Sergius Hermitage.
A destroyed temple in the Kurilovo tract in the Shatura district of the Moscow region (Photo: Ilya Pitalev/TASS)
If real estate is transferred into ownership, Anoprienko explains, the parish receives a plot of land adjacent to the temple. You can only build church premises on it - a utensils shop, a clergy house, Sunday school, almshouse, etc. It is prohibited to erect objects that can be used for economic purposes.
The Russian Orthodox Church received about 165 objects for free use, and about 100 for ownership, as follows from the data on the website of the Federal Property Management Agency. “Nothing surprising,” explains Anoprienko. “The church chooses free use, because in this case it can use government funding and count on subsidies for the restoration and maintenance of churches from the authorities. If the property is owned, all responsibility will fall on the Russian Orthodox Church.”
In 2015, the Federal Property Management Agency offered the Russian Orthodox Church to take 1,971 objects, but so far only 212 applications have been received, says Anoprienko. The head of the legal service of the Moscow Patriarchate, Abbess Ksenia (Chernega), is convinced that only destroyed buildings are given to churches. “When the law was discussed, we compromised and did not insist on restitution of property lost by the church. Now, as a rule, we are not offered a single normal building in large cities, but only ruined objects that require large expenses. We took a lot of destroyed churches in the 90s, and now, understandably, we wanted to get something better,” she says. The church, according to the abbess, will “fight for the necessary objects.”
The loudest battle is for St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg
St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg (Photo: Roshchin Alexander/TASS)
In July 2015, Metropolitan Barsanuphius of St. Petersburg and Ladoga addressed the Governor of St. Petersburg Georgy Poltavchenko with a request to give the famous Isaac for free use. This called into question the work of the museum located in the cathedral, a scandal ensued - the media wrote about the transfer of the monument on the front pages, a petition demanding to prevent the transfer of the cathedral collected over 85 thousand signatures on change.org.
In September, the authorities decided to leave the cathedral on the city's balance sheet, but Nikolai Burov, director of the St. Isaac's Cathedral museum complex (which includes three other cathedrals), is still waiting for a catch.
The complex does not receive money from the budget, 750 million rubles. He earns his annual allowance himself - from tickets, Burov is proud. In his opinion, the Russian Orthodox Church wants to open the cathedral only for worship, “jeopardizing free visits” to the site.
“Everything continues in the spirit of the “best Soviet” traditions - the temple is used as a museum, the museum management behaves like real atheists!” — counters Burov’s opponent, Archpriest Alexander Pelin from the St. Petersburg diocese.
“Why does the museum dominate the temple? Everything should be the other way around - first the temple, since this was originally intended by our pious ancestors,” the priest is outraged. The church, Pelin has no doubt, has the right to collect donations from visitors.
Budget money
“If you are supported by the state, you are closely connected with it, there are no options,” reflects priest Alexei Uminsky, rector of the Trinity Church in Khokhly. The current church interacts too closely with the authorities, he believes. However, his views do not coincide with the opinion of the leadership of the patriarchate.
According to RBC estimates, in 2012-2015, the Russian Orthodox Church and related structures received at least 14 billion rubles from the budget and from government organizations. Moreover, only in new version The budget for 2016 provides 2.6 billion rubles.
Next to the Sofrino trading house on Prechistenka there is one of the branches of the ASVT group of telecommunications companies. Parkhaev also owned 10.7% of the company until at least 2009. The co-founder of the company (through JSC Russdo) is the co-chairman of the Union of Orthodox Women Anastasia Ositis, Irina Fedulova. ASVT's revenue for 2014 was over 436.7 million rubles, profit - 64 million rubles. Ositis, Fedulova and Parkhaev did not respond to questions for this article.
Parkhaev was listed as the chairman of the board of directors and owner of the Sofrino bank (until 2006 it was called Old Bank). The Central Bank revoked the license of this financial institution in June 2014. Judging by SPARK data, the owners of the bank are Alemazh LLC, Stek-T LLC, Elbin-M LLC, Sian-M LLC and Mekona-M LLC. According to the Central Bank, the beneficiary of these companies is Dmitry Malyshev, ex-chairman of the board of Sofrino Bank and representative of the Moscow Patriarchate in government bodies.
Immediately after the renaming of Old Bank to Sofrino, the Housing Construction Company (HCC), founded by Malyshev and partners, received several large contracts from the Russian Orthodox Church: in 2006, the Housing Construction Company won 36 competitions announced by the Ministry of Culture (formerly Roskultura) for the restoration temples. The total volume of contracts is 60 million rubles.
Parhaev’s biography from the website parhaev.com reports the following: born on June 19, 1941 in Moscow, worked as a turner at the Krasny Proletary plant, in 1965 he came to work at the Patriarchate, participated in the restoration of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, and enjoyed the favor of Patriarch Pimen. Parkhaev’s activities are described not without picturesque details: “Evgeniy Alekseevich provided the construction with everything necessary,<…>solved all the problems, and trucks with sand, bricks, cement, and metal went to the construction site.”
Parkhaev’s energy, the unknown biographer continues, is enough to manage, with the blessing of the patriarch, the Danilovskaya Hotel: “This is a modern and comfortable hotel, in the conference hall of which local cathedrals, religious and peace conferences, and concerts are held. The hotel needed just such a leader: experienced and purposeful.”
The daily cost of a single room at Danilovskaya with breakfast on weekdays is 6,300 rubles, an apartment is 13 thousand rubles, services include a sauna, bar, car rental and organization of events. The income of Danilovskaya in 2013 was 137.4 million rubles, in 2014 - 112 million rubles.
Parkhaev is a man from the team of Alexy II, who managed to prove his indispensability to Patriarch Kirill, RBC’s interlocutor in the company producing church products is sure. The permanent head of Sofrino enjoys privileges that even prominent priests are deprived of, confirms an RBC source in one of the large dioceses. In 2012, photographs from Parkhaev’s anniversary appeared on the Internet - the holiday was celebrated with pomp in the hall of the church councils of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. After this, the guests of the hero of the day went by boat to Parkhaev’s dacha in the Moscow region. The photographs, the authenticity of which no one has disputed, show an impressive cottage, a tennis court and a pier with boats.
From cemeteries to T-shirts
The sphere of interests of the Russian Orthodox Church includes medicines, jewelry, renting out conference rooms, Vedomosti wrote, as well as agriculture and the funeral services market. According to the SPARK database, the Patriarchate is a co-owner of Orthodox Ritual Service CJSC: the company is now closed, but a subsidiary established by it, Orthodox Ritual Service OJSC, is operating (revenue for 2014 - 58.4 million rubles).
The Ekaterinburg diocese owned a large granite quarry "Granit" and the security company "Derzhava", the Vologda diocese had a factory of reinforced concrete products and structures. The Kemerovo diocese is the 100% owner of Kuzbass Investment and Construction Company LLC, a co-owner of the Novokuznetsk Computer Center and the Europe Media Kuzbass agency.
In the Danilovsky Monastery in Moscow there are several retail outlets: the monastery shop and the Danilovsky Souvenir store. You can buy church utensils, leather wallets, T-shirts with Orthodox prints, and Orthodox literature. The monastery does not disclose financial indicators. On the territory of the Sretensky Monastery there is a store “Sretenie” and a cafe “Unholy Saints”, named after the book of the same name by the abbot, Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov). The cafe, according to the bishop, “doesn’t bring in any money.” The main source of income for the monastery is publishing. The monastery owns land in the agricultural cooperative “Resurrection” (the former collective farm “Voskhod”; the main activity is the cultivation of grain and legumes, and livestock). Revenue for 2014 was 52.3 million rubles, profit was about 14 million rubles.
Finally, since 2012, structures of the Russian Orthodox Church have owned the building of the Universitetskaya Hotel in the southwest of Moscow. The cost of a standard single room is 3 thousand rubles. The pilgrimage center of the Russian Orthodox Church is located in this hotel. “In Universitetskaya there is a large hall, you can hold conferences and accommodate people who come to events. The hotel, of course, is cheap, very simple people stay there, very rarely bishops,” Chapnin told RBC.
Church cash desk
Archpriest Chaplin was unable to realize his long-standing idea - a banking system that eliminated usurious interest. While Orthodox banking exists only in words, the Patriarchate uses the services of the most ordinary banks.
Until recently, the church had accounts in three organizations - Ergobank, Vneshprombank and Peresvet Bank (the latter is also owned by structures of the Russian Orthodox Church). The salaries of employees of the Synodal Department of the Patriarchate, according to RBC's source in the Russian Orthodox Church, were transferred to accounts in Sberbank and Promsvyazbank (the banks' press services did not respond to RBC's request; a source close to Promsvyazbank said that the bank, among other things, holds church funds parishes).
Ergobank served more than 60 Orthodox organizations and 18 dioceses, including the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and the Compound of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. In January, the bank's license was revoked due to a hole discovered in its balance sheet.
The church agreed to open accounts with Ergobank because of one of its shareholders, Valery Meshalkin (about 20%), explains RBC’s interlocutor in the patriarchate. “Meshalkin is a church man, an Orthodox businessman who helped churches a lot. It was believed that this was a guarantee that nothing would happen to the bank,” the source describes.
Ergobank office in Moscow (Photo: Sharifulin Valery/TASS)
Valery Meshalkin is the owner of the construction and installation company Energomashcapital, a member of the board of trustees of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, the author of the book “The Influence of Holy Mount Athos on Monastic Traditions” Eastern Europe" Meshalkin did not answer RBC's questions. As a source in Ergobank told RBC, money was withdrawn from the accounts of the ROC structure before the license was revoked.
In what turned out to be no less problematic, 1.5 billion rubles. ROC, a source in the bank told RBC and was confirmed by two interlocutors close to the patriarchate. The bank's license was also revoked in January. According to one of RBC's interlocutors, the chairman of the board of the bank, Larisa Marcus, was close to the patriarchate and its leadership, so the church chose this bank to store part of its money. According to RBC's interlocutors, in addition to the Patriarchate, several funds that carried out the instructions of the Patriarch kept funds in Vneshprombank. The largest is the Foundation of Saints Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine and Helen. An RBC source in the Patriarchate said that the foundation collected money to help victims of the conflicts in Syria and Donetsk. Information about fundraising is also available on the Internet.
The founders of the fund are Anastasia Ositis and Irina Fedulova, already mentioned in connection with the Russian Orthodox Church. In the past - at least until 2008 - Ositis and Fedulova were shareholders of Vneshprombank.
However, the main bank of the church is the Moscow Peresvet. As of December 1, 2015, the bank’s accounts held funds of enterprises and organizations (RUB 85.8 billion) and individuals (RUB 20.2 billion). Assets as of January 1 were 186 billion rubles, more than half of which were loans to companies, the bank’s profit was 2.5 billion rubles. There are over 3.2 billion rubles in the accounts of non-profit organizations, as follows from the reporting of Peresvet.
The financial and economic management of the ROC owns 36.5% of the bank, another 13.2% is owned by the ROC-owned company Sodeystvie LLC. Other owners include Vnukovo-invest LLC (1.7%). The office of this company is located at the same address as Assistance. An employee of Vnukovo-invest could not explain to an RBC correspondent whether there was a connection between his company and Sodeystvo. The phones at the Assistance office are not answered.
JSCB Peresvet could cost up to 14 billion rubles, and the share of ROC in the amount of 49.7%, presumably, up to 7 billion rubles, IFC Markets analyst Dmitry Lukashov calculated for RBC.
Investments and innovations
Not much is known about where ROC funds are invested by banks. But it is known for sure that the Russian Orthodox Church does not shy away from venture investments.
Peresvet invests money in innovative projects through the Sberinvest company, in which the bank owns 18.8%. Innovation financing is shared: 50% of the money is provided by Sberinvest investors (including Peresvet), 50% by state corporations and funds. Funds for projects co-financed by Sberinvest were found in the Russian Venture Company (the press service of RVC refused to name the amount of funds), the Skolkovo Foundation (the fund invested 5 million rubles in developments, a representative of the fund said) and the state corporation Rusnano (on Sberinvest projects have been allocated $50 million, a press service employee said).
The press service of the RBC state corporation explained: to finance joint projects with Sberinvest, the international Nanoenergo fund was created in 2012. Rusnano and Peresvet each invested $50 million into the fund.
In 2015, the Rusnano Capital Fund S.A. - a subsidiary of Rusnano - appealed to the District Court of Nicosia (Cyprus) with a request to recognize Peresvet Bank as a co-defendant in the case of violation of the investment agreement. The statement of claim (available to RBC) states that the bank, in violation of procedures, transferred “$90 million from the accounts of Nanoenergo to the accounts of Russian companies affiliated with Sberinvest.” The accounts of these companies were opened in Peresvet.
The court recognized Peresvet as one of the co-defendants. Representatives of Sberinvest and Rusnano confirmed to RBC the existence of a lawsuit.
“This is all some kind of nonsense,” Oleg Dyachenko, a member of the board of directors of Sberinvest, does not lose heart in a conversation with RBC. “We have good energy projects with Rusnano, everything is going on, everything is moving - a composite pipe plant has fully entered the market, silicon dioxide is at a very high level, we process rice, we produce heat, we have reached an export position.” In response to the question of where the money went, the top manager laughs: “You see, I’m free. So the money wasn’t lost.” Dyachenko believes that the case will be closed.
The press service of Peresvet did not respond to RBC’s repeated requests. The chairman of the board of the bank, Alexander Shvets, did the same.
Income and expenses
“Since Soviet times, the church economy has been opaque,” explains rector Alexei Uminsky, “it is built on the principle of a public service center: parishioners give money for some service, but no one is interested in how it is distributed. And the parish priests themselves don’t know exactly where the money they collect goes.”
Indeed, it is impossible to calculate church expenses: the Russian Orthodox Church does not announce tenders and does not appear on the government procurement website. In economic activities, the church, says Abbess Ksenia (Chernega), “does not hire contractors,” coping on our own— food is supplied by monasteries, candles are melted by workshops. The multi-layered pie is divided within the Russian Orthodox Church.
“What does the church spend on?” - the abbess asks again and answers: “Theological seminaries throughout Russia are maintained, this is a fairly large share of the expenses.” The church also provides charitable assistance to orphans and other social institutions; all synodal departments are financed from the general church budget, she adds.
The Patriarchate did not provide RBC with data on the expenditure items of its budget. In 2006, in the Foma magazine, Natalya Deryuzhkina, at that time an accountant for the Patriarchate, estimated the costs of maintaining the Moscow and St. Petersburg theological seminaries at 60 million rubles. per year.
Such expenses are still relevant today, confirms Archpriest Chaplin. Also, the priest clarifies, it is necessary to pay salaries to the secular staff of the patriarchate. In total, this is 200 people with an average salary of 40 thousand rubles. per month, says RBC’s source in the patriarchy.
These expenses are insignificant compared to the annual contributions of the dioceses to Moscow. What happens to all the rest of the money?
A few days after the scandalous resignation, Archpriest Chaplin opened an account on Facebook, where he wrote: “Understanding everything, I consider concealing income and especially expenses of the central church budget to be completely immoral. In principle, there cannot be the slightest Christian justification for such a concealment.”
There is no need to disclose the items of expenditure of the Russian Orthodox Church, since it is absolutely clear what the church spends money on - for church needs, the chairman of the synodal department for relations between the church and society and the media, Vladimir Legoida, reproached the RBC correspondent.
How do other churches live?
It is not customary to publish reports on the income and expenses of a church, regardless of denominational affiliation.
Dioceses of Germany
A recent exception has been the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), which partially discloses income and expenses. Thus, the dioceses of Germany began to reveal their financial indicators after a scandal with the Bishop of Limburg, for whom construction of a new residence began in 2010. In 2010, the diocese valued the work at €5.5 million, but three years later the cost almost doubled to €9.85 million. To avoid claims in the press, many dioceses began to disclose their budgets. According to reports, the budget of the RCC dioceses consists of property income, donations, as well as church taxes, which are levied on parishioners. According to 2014 data, the diocese of Cologne became the richest (its income is €772 million, tax revenue is €589 million). According to the plan for 2015, the total expenditures of the diocese were estimated at 800 million.
Vatican Bank
Data on the financial transactions of the Institute of Religious Affairs (IOR, Istituto per le Opere di Religione), better known as the Vatican Bank, is now being published. The bank was created in 1942 to manage the financial resources of the Holy See. The Vatican Bank published its first financial report in 2013. According to the report, in 2012 the bank's profit amounted to €86.6 million, a year earlier - €20.3 million. Net interest income was €52.25 million, income from trading activities was €51.1 million.
Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCOR)
Unlike Catholic dioceses, reports on the income and expenses of the ROCOR are not published. According to Archpriest Peter Kholodny, who was the treasurer of the ROCOR for a long time, the economy of the foreign church is structured simply: parishes pay contributions to the dioceses of the ROCOR, and they transfer the money to the Synod. The percentage of annual contributions for parishes is 10%; 5% is transferred from dioceses to the Synod. The wealthiest dioceses are in Australia, Canada, Germany, and the USA.
The main income of the ROCOR, according to Kholodny, comes from renting out the four-story Synod building: it is located in the upper part of Manhattan, on the corner of Park Avenue and 93rd Street. The area of the building is 4 thousand square meters. m, 80% is occupied by the Synod, the rest is rented to a private school. Annual rental income, according to Kholodny’s estimates, is about $500 thousand.
In addition, the income of the ROCOR comes from the Kursk Root Icon (located in the ROCOR Cathedral of the Sign in New York). The icon is taken all over the world, donations go to the budget of the foreign church, explains Kholodny. The ROCOR Synod also owns a candle factory near New York. The ROCOR does not transfer money to the Moscow Patriarchate: “Our church is much poorer than the Russian one. Although we own incredibly valuable tracts of land—particularly half of the Garden of Gethsemane—it is not monetized in any way.”
With the participation of Tatyana Aleshkina, Yulia Titova, Svetlana Bocharova, Georgy Makarenko, Irina Malkova
If you open the website of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2018 and look at the members of the Holy Synod, of which there are more than 400, you will notice that only black monks are at the helm of the church. It is not easy to meet a parish priest in the Synod, because they only carry out the decisions made by the monks.
A more careful analysis leads to another discovery: less than a quarter of the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2018 have a higher secular education. On the contrary, approximately half in their youth were promoted from the positions of subdeacons under the bishops then in force. But the fact that the majority of the Synod members have roots in Bessarabia and the south-east of Ukraine, in Donetsk and Lugansk, is almost impossible to calculate. Although this is the holy truth and the root of all modern troubles of Russian Orthodoxy, the author of the Lenta.ru investigation argued in 2018.
It is in southeastern Ukraine and eastern Moldova that the Russian Orthodox Church has traditionally maintained its most patriarchal views. It was here that hundreds of Orthodox Christians committed suicide back in tsarist times. This is where the hatred of TIN and any passport comes from. It was here that cheerful fellow villagers most often disappeared. It was here that the Black Hundred was born. This is where Father Peter Kucher and many other princes of the Russian Orthodox Church come from.
Metropolises and dioceses
As of July 2018, the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church includes 79 metropolises and 356 dioceses, including:
Influence groups
Assets
Parishes
As of July 2018, almost 40 thousand elders, more than 5 thousand deacons and almost 400 bishops serve in the church.
In 1991, when the USSR collapsed and the religious revival began, the Russian Orthodox Church had about 6.5 thousand parishes, two-thirds of them in Ukraine. As of August 2018, there are more than 36 thousand parishes in the Russian Orthodox Church, of which about 25 thousand are in Russia.
The number of monasteries has exceeded a thousand - there was never such a number before the revolution.
Three new parishes open every day.
In mid-2017, the thousandth monastery opened in Russia, and as of January 1, 2018, there were 1010 of them. For comparison: before the Khrushchev persecutions there were only 14 monasteries in the USSR (the majority were in the Ukrainian SSR), in the 1980s there were four ( Trinity-Sergius and Pskov-Pechersk Lavra, Riga Hermitage (nunnery) and the Assumption Monastery in Pyukhtitsa, Estonia).
Commercial activities
- "Artistic and production enterprise (HPP) "Sofrino"
- Hotel "Danilovskaya"
- management of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, owned by the Moscow Government
- OJSC "Ritual Orthodox Service" (as of 2016)
State support
Funding from the budget
According to RBC estimates, in 2012–2015, the Russian Orthodox Church and related structures received at least 14 billion rubles from the budget and from government organizations. Moreover, the 2016 budget version alone provides for 2.6 billion rubles.
In particular, in 2014–2015, over 1.8 billion rubles were allocated to Russian Orthodox Church organizations. for the creation and development of Russian spiritual and educational centers under the federal program “Strengthening the unity of the Russian nation and the ethnocultural development of the peoples of Russia.”
Another program supporting the church is “Culture of Russia”: since 2012, almost 10.8 billion rubles have been allocated for the preservation of religious objects within the program. In addition, 0.5 billion rubles. in 2012–2015 it was allocated for the restoration of objects of religious significance, said a representative of the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage.
Among the major recipients of contracts on the government procurement website is the Orthodox Encyclopedia church-scientific center (founded by the Patriarchate), which publishes a tome of the same name in 40 volumes edited by Patriarch Kirill. Since 2012 public schools and universities spent about 250 million rubles on the purchase of this book. And the subsidiary organization of the Orthodox Encyclopedia - the Orthodox Encyclopedia Foundation - received 56 million rubles in 2013. from the Ministry of Culture - for the filming of the films “Sergius of Radonezh” and “Snake Bite”.
In 2015, the Ministry of Education allocated about 112 million rubles from the budget. Orthodox St. Tikhon's Humanitarian University.
The Central Clinical Hospital of St. Alexis under the Moscow Patriarchate received 198 million rubles from the Ministry of Health in 2015, and the new budget provides for another 178 million rubles for the hospital.
The budget for 2016 includes about 1 billion rubles. “The charitable foundation for the restoration of the Resurrection New Jerusalem stauropegial monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church” - the founder of the fund is the monastery itself.
In addition, from 2013 to 2015, Orthodox organizations received 256 million rubles. within the framework of presidential grants. The Russian Orthodox Church has no direct relationship with the recipients of the grants, they simply “were created by Orthodox people,” explains Archpriest Chaplin. Although the church does not directly participate in the creation of such organizations, random people there is no such thing, Sergei Chapnin, former editor of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, is sure.
According to the same principle, he says, money is distributed in the only Orthodox grant program, “Orthodox Initiative” (funds were allocated by Rosatom, two sources familiar with the program told RBC; the corporation’s press service did not answer RBC’s question).
The “Orthodox Initiative” has been held since 2005, the total amount of funding over the years of the competition is almost 568 million rubles.
Tax benefits
As of August 2018, the Russian Orthodox Church, like any officially registered religious organization in Russia, has benefits, but every single one of them is key. She is completely exempt from paying:
That is, in fact, the Russian Orthodox Church does not pay anything to the budget at all.
The Tax Code of the Russian Federation clearly stipulates: exemption comes only from religious activities, and all commercial activities, even those carried out by the Russian Orthodox Church, are subject to mandatory taxation. Therefore, according to reports, the church does not conduct commercial activities at all. And there is no point in arguing with this. However, according to a high-ranking Russian official, in reality they simply do not want to get involved with the church.
| “Priests are now included in absolutely all elected bodies at all levels of government, from local parliaments to various kinds of public councils and supervisory commissions - right up to ministerial and federal ones. This, of course, is correct, but it opens the door for them to managers of any rank, where they can simply complain so that the commission is recalled or they turn a blind eye to the identified shortcomings. And believe me, the clergy take advantage of this. Moreover, on the direct orders of his leadership,” he explains. |
As paradoxical as it may sound, state support makes the entire economy of the Russian Orthodox Church black. Or gray - after all, not a single parish is accountable to anyone. Nobody checks them except the Church itself.
Transfer of real estate
An equally strange story happened to a woman who worked for many years as an agent for an employee of the apartment fraud department and uncovered the schemes of several gangs of “black realtors.” She was infiltrated into a group suspected of legalizing the apartments of old women who allegedly sold their homes and went to a monastery. She suddenly cut off all contact with the officer supervising her and shut down the operation on her own, and then sent her daughter to a church school, changed her clothing style and began attending church regularly.
Experienced criminals know that they will always find shelter in the monastery - the Russian Orthodox Church categorically refuses to give law enforcement agencies any information about those who have found refuge behind the church wall. In the summer of 2017, a certificate from the Ministry of Internal Affairs was even leaked to the press with a complaint about the abbots of churches obstructing the investigation. The answer to it from Archpriest Sergius was also made publicly available. He reports that the church sees no reason to provide passport data of persons in the dioceses.
Father Sergius himself, in the world Sergei Privalov, a native of Bryansk, served in the armed forces of the USSR and the Russian Federation until 2001. Having retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he changed his green field uniform to a black church uniform, and over the next 11 years he made a dizzying career: he became an archpriest and a church clergyman. Holy Mother of God in Petrovsky Park, candidate of theology, member of the Supreme Synodal Council, as well as chairman of the synodal commission for interaction with the armed forces and law enforcement agencies. In other words, he is the highest official of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose decision practically cannot be reversed.
So it is not surprising that it is Archpriest Sergius who regularly refuses to allow law enforcement officers to take fingerprints from monastery employees and seize genetic material from them.
Pursuit of fugitives from monasteries
As you know, one of the most terrible church sins is escaping from the monastery. According to the charter, you cannot just leave the monastery - you must take off your vow, that is, become undressed. And this procedure is not quick, so it is easier to escape - the secular authorities still do not consider this an offense. As of July 2018, between 300 and 400 men and women were reported to have escaped from monasteries in the Russian Federation. The police do not formally accept such statements - escaping from a monastery is not considered a criminal offense, but such people need to be looked for and punished so that others are discouraged. This is done by the security service of the Russian Orthodox Church. True, such an organization does not officially exist. In the structure of the Church there was only one private security company, Sofrino, but in June 2017 it stopped working and handed over all weapons to the licensing system of the Russian Guard.
Previously, the Russian Orthodox Church was among the founders of the Peresvet bank. It is there that, as of 2018, one of the most serious security services in Russia operates. In October 2017, it was headed by Oleg Feoktistov, a former FSB general, the author of an operational combination that resulted in a prison sentence for the Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukaev. Peresvet security officers were seen at at least two crime scenes associated with the Russian Orthodox Church, and at one of them, as a police operative would later write in an explanatory note, they were engaged in “fixing trace objects using forensic equipment.” That explanatory report was never put into action, and the crime itself remained unsolved. We are talking about the murder of a priest on the threshold of the St. Nicholas Monastery in Pereslavl-Zalessky. The same monastery, the rector of which is Archimandrite Dimitri, the confessor of Mother Lyudmila from the ill-fated village of Moseytsevo.
The security service of the Russian Orthodox Church actively conducts operational-search work - that is, it secretly collects information about people, including using technical means. For example, it identifies the phone numbers from which girls from Moseytsevo accessed the Internet. After all, few people can, upon seeing a profile on VKontakte, quickly find out from which phone number the person was online and calculate his location. Someone from the environment of the Moseytsev mothers did this in a matter of seconds. And a certain Matrona Yaroslavskaya, within a few minutes after discovering the girls’ profiles, knew not only their mobile numbers, but also the address of their newly created email. The identity of Matrona herself could not be established.
The same fate befell several journalists who wrote on church-related topics: they suddenly learned that the contents of their personal letters were becoming known to the highest church hierarchs. In other words, the security service of the Russian Orthodox Church does not formally exist, but in reality it is actively working. In any case, in December 2017, after the sentencing of the mothers from Moseytsevo, someone wanted to find out the fate of their adopted children. By that time, absolutely all their documents had been changed, but the registry office of the Yaroslavl region tried to obtain a list of issued birth certificates, and the directorate of the orphanage received a request, allegedly from a legal bureau, demanding to provide the girls’ personal files. And someone else searched and opened their email accounts, and did it very professionally.
One can argue for a long time whether there is a special unit of hacker monks within the Russian Orthodox Church, but dozens of priests with whom the author of the Lenta.ru investigation spoke in 2018 said one thing: the metropolitans knew verbatim the contents of their emails and correspondence in closed social network groups. And, despite the motto “the Internet is sinful,” followers of the church actively use the World Wide Web. Especially when you need to find someone.
There were many rumors that the princes of the Russian Orthodox Church had titles of the KGB of the USSR and party cards. This cannot be asserted - many priests in the 1980s were very oppositional and even opportunistic. But this cannot be considered an absolute lie either. In any case, in 2015, special religious departments operated within the structures of the territorial departments of the FSB, which essentially acted as arbitrators, especially at a time when conflicts gained resonance. In Moseytsevo, for example, it was the FSB officers who assured the criminal investigation operatives that no one would interfere with their investigation of the criminal case, but there was no need to dig to the side. In Bogolyubovo, officers from specialized FSB units also smoothed out rough edges. At the same time, it is the FSB in Moscow that is preventing the adoption of changes to laws that would make the budget of religious organizations transparent.
The Western press often says that money for bribes to officials and payment for intelligence information, especially political, comes to various countries through church channels. But in our country, this data, even in translated articles, does not appear. And not because someone formally prohibits it, there is internal censorship. In rare cases - the authority of the editor. It is no secret that it is Orthodox parishes that often provide assistance to compatriots.
Lack of labor legislation
In 2017, the educational commission of the Moscow Patriarchate came with an inspection to the Vladimir Theological Seminary, and almost by accident found out: out of a dozen reputable professors, only two were formally employed - the rector and the first vice-rector. And the rest worked for many years without registration, work books and contributions to the Pension Fund. They received their salaries in envelopes and thought that was how it was supposed to be. Having learned the truth, we went to bow to the Patriarchate. And there they said: the pension will be paid by those whom you have now trained. In fact, the matter was put on hold. People quit their jobs, but no one will make up for the years they missed - neither in length of service, nor in mandatory deductions. And these teachers have nowhere to go - the Russian Orthodox Church has a monopoly on spiritual education.
Russians will be very surprised when they find out: priests have absolutely no rights. Yes, they were forced to issue work books for them, but not everyone still has them - in every church, in every monastery they were written out for the required minimum of clergy. But no one has employment contracts. They didn’t even develop a standard form.
Priests' salaries
As of 2018, the salary of a Russian priest ranges from 20 to 40 thousand rubles per month. Some say that personal income tax is withheld from them, some say that they are completely exempt from taxes. The abbot receives much more.
Moreover, in the conditions of the hierarchy, issues of prestige manifest themselves especially clearly. Therefore, an ordinary priest will never buy a car more prestigious than that of a rector; the rector will not appear in public wearing a watch more expensive than the bishop's; and the bishop will not have a rarity that the patriarch does not have. Therefore, the desire to stand out manifests itself differently.
In June 2018, one of the recruitment agencies was looking for a personal chef for the abbess of the holy monastery. The salary was promised at 90 thousand rubles. According to agency employees, the abbess was going to pay her personal money.
Workers' and Peasants' Army
In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, a fundamental problem of the Russian Orthodox Church arose: there was essentially no one to revive the religion and its institutions. After all, all the churchmen were exterminated as a class.
| “The growth rate of the Russian Orthodox Church is colossal,” said Father Nikolai in July 2018, in the world - Nikolai Dmitrievich Gundyaev (namesake), a former priest who left the Church after criticizing the structure of the church. In the early 1990s, during the period of reconstruction of the Russian Orthodox Church, tragic utopianism was superimposed on book Orthodoxy: the world was going to hell, it would not last long, the third world war was ahead, we had to save ourselves - and a mass of destitute people from broken families flocked to monasteries in search of, if not better life, then with the thought of where to save your children from debauchery, from alcohol, from drugs, from prostitution. Then the monasteries were still such utopian communities of Tommaso Campanella (the author of “City of the Sun”, according to V.I. Lenin, is one of the predecessors of scientific socialism) and represented not so much Orthodoxy as military communism. People all left the Soviet Union with the collective farm as a model. This is what they built, not the apostolic community. Therefore, what turned out to be not God’s houses, but the same collective farms, only with the Gospel in their hands. People from Bessarabia and south-eastern Ukraine were especially valued. And it naturally happened that out of all possible Orthodoxies we began to build a peasant one. Again, with all the ensuing consequences - with the promotion of subsistence farming and peasant culture, as well as the rejection of city life. Why do peasants need passports? "Taxpayer Identification Number" (TIN)? Books? Cards? Travel abroad? Peasants have always lived from subsistence farming! Well, that is, such peasant practicality. It was then that the roots of the current troubles of the Russian Orthodox Church were laid - it so happened that the monastic, black clergy in Russia is traditionally less educated than the white clergy. This is our specificity, in contrast, for example, to Catholics: their monks are more educated than parish priests. Since then, since the revival of the Church, people who have taken monastic vows have made a crazy career. Lightning fast. Where a white priest had to plow and plow, serve and serve, blacks could, in two years, decorate themselves with everything they could, and take positions that an ordinary priest had never dreamed of. Accordingly, from rags to riches, without education - without corresponding length of service - forward. These are again Stalin’s falcons, non-commissioned officers who became generals of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, who studied on the principle of “takeoff - landing - ready to fight.” . |
At the end of the period of stagnation, the profile of the average district-level chief looked like this: eight years of education, technical school, service in the ranks of the armed forces of the USSR, proletarian (or collective farm) specialty, University
Serf prisoners
In 2018, a defrocked pop singer living in the Baikal region easily explained the everyday tricks of the lower echelon of Russian Orthodoxy.
| - If you want to recover, go beyond Ural-Kamen. They take everyone there - the last bandits and convicts. The more serious the crime, the further east you have to go. It’s very difficult here, but they count a day as three. I personally know a dozen completely officially ordained elders, each of whom is a convict and murderer, on their conscience not one or two, but ten to twenty victims, including those added already in the ministry. There is REAL serfdom here, because you can’t leave here. They don't pay you money, but they ask for work. |
For Ural mountains Even officials and the leadership of security forces openly talk about serfdom in the monasteries and hermitages of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2018. This is a problem that needs to be solved, but no one knows how to solve it. Although there are many advisers. Already in December 2017, one Siberian journalist, having learned the story about Moseytsevo, looked into the narrator’s eyes for a long time and uncomprehendingly, and then said: “You don’t know life there at all in Europe.” We don’t make a fuss about such nonsense. The law is taiga. Look for fistulas.
According to him, dozens of people, mostly released prisoners, are missing. They end up in distant villages, where they work for free for the benefit of the church.
He clarified that these so-called Orthodox monasteries are often protected by law enforcement officers. But they protect - the word is not very accurate: they do not take money for concealment. Another thing is more curious: since the 1990s, those released from prison began to actively settle in monasteries in Central Russia, and later in the Russian south. There is even a term for them - “winter monks,” that is, those who take monastic vows for the winter in order to sit out the harsh times in warmth and satiety. In fact, according to law enforcement officials, a unique symbiosis has arisen: the bearers of criminal culture ensure order in monasteries using Zonov methods, which guarantees an influx of material wealth, and the church gives them protection from law enforcement agencies and the flock.
Education system
2018
In 2018, the Educational Committee of the Russian Orthodox Church was headed by the ambitious Moscow Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, the former rector of the Church of St. Tatiana at Moscow State University. Over the course of a year, he inspected almost all theological schools of the Russian Orthodox Church and even suspended the work of the most hopeless ones.
However, he had to admit that the Sretensky Theological Seminary of Metropolitan Tikhon has the best indicators in the system: over the 20 years of its existence, it has graduated 550 seminarians, of whom 70% became clergy, and the rest work in various synodal structures.
1994-2018
From 1994 to 2018, the Patriarchate’s Educational Committee was headed by Archbishop Evgeniy (Reshetnikov). After several attempts at reform, stagnation reigned in the economy under his jurisdiction.
Numerous provincial seminaries, which opened in the wake of the “religious revival” of the 1990s, could not find applicants or funds to feed students. But even the country's leading theological schools - the Moscow and St. Petersburg academies - catastrophically lost graduates who did not want to serve in the church line. It was necessary to introduce something like partial serfdom - when graduates of academies and seminaries sign legally significant obligations for at least three years after receiving a diploma to work in the church or to cover astronomical amounts for training and maintenance at their own expense. Under Evgeniy, theological schools of the Russian Orthodox Church switched to the Bologna system, implying a two-level structure higher education: the seminar course was equated to a bachelor's degree, and the academic course to a master's degree.
2016: The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church met with the Pope for the first time
In February 2016, the first meeting of their primates in the history of the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches took place in Havana. Its result was a joint document designed to draw the attention of the world community to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and the decline of moral values in the world.
The meeting of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' and the Pope of Rome was prepared for almost twenty years. It was first planned to be held back in 1997 in Austria. During preliminary negotiations, a draft joint statement was then prepared, which, in particular, contained a rejection of Uniatism as a means of reunifying churches and of Catholic proselytism in Russia and other CIS countries. But at the very last moment, the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church decided to exclude these points from the joint document, and the meeting had to be cancelled. In 2002, there was a new round of aggravation in relations between the churches, when Pope John Paul II raised the status of the administrative structures of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia to the level of dioceses without prior consultation with the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church. As a result, the possibility of a meeting between the two first hierarchs was reduced to zero for a long time.
Only after the accession of Pope Benedict XVI to the Holy See, who managed to relieve the tension that existed during the previous pontificate, Orthodox-Catholic relations took on a positive and progressive character. Most likely, if Pope Benedict XVI had not retired in 2013, his meeting with Patriarch Kirill would have taken place. Pope Francis continued his predecessor's policy of normalizing relations between the Vatican and the Moscow Patriarchate, which ultimately allowed the historic meeting to take place.
The first meeting of Orthodox and Catholics "on top level"after the division of the Christian Church into Eastern and Western in 1054 (not counting the Council of Florence in 1439) took place almost 53 years ago: on January 5, 1964, Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople and Pope Paul VI met in Jerusalem. As a result, mutual anathemas were canceled in 1965 The meeting was made possible by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which “opened” the Catholic Church to dialogue with other religions: “Truth is to be sought through exchange and dialogue.”
It was decided to hold the first meeting of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' with the Pope in Cuba at the José Martí International Airport. This was due to the fact that Patriarch Kirill from the very beginning did not want it to take place in Europe, since it was there that the centuries-old difficult history of divisions and conflicts between Christians unfolded.
The main topic of the negotiations in Cuba was the discussion of pressing social, political and moral problems of our time. The final document, which was signed by the patriarch and the pope, spoke, in particular, about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The hierarchs called on the international community "to take immediate action to prevent further displacement of Christians from the Middle East." In addition, they made a call to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. One of the fundamental points of the document is the recognition by the Pope that union is not a means of restoring church unity. The document also spoke about the protection of family values and the rapprochement of Orthodox and Catholic positions on the issue of proselytism: the parties called for abandoning it, since it “has practical significance for peaceful coexistence." Both churches emphasize that neither theological nor canonical issues were discussed at the meeting. This suggests that it was organized not to resolve dogmatic differences, but to draw the attention of the world community to existing problems - in particular, to armed conflicts, persecution of Christians and the decline of moral values in the world, the Patriarch and the Pope demonstrated to the world that, despite dogmatic differences, Christians are ready to jointly defend common Christian values in an increasingly secular world.
1980s: 4 thousand out of 6.5 thousand parishes in Ukraine
At the end of the 1980s, when the church revival, officially called the “return to faith,” began in the USSR, there were 6.5 thousand parishes in the Russian Orthodox Church. Of these, almost 4 thousand are in Ukraine, with the majority in its southeastern part. There are about 500 more in Moldova - more precisely, in that part of it that was traditionally called the Bessarabia province, or Bessarabia. At that time there were three seminaries in the USSR - Zagorsk, Leningrad and Odessa, and two Theological Academies - Moscow and Leningrad. State policy was such that most of their applicants already had incomplete higher secular education.
»Whose cash, shares, land and real estate are worth more than 1 billion euros. What assets belong to the Russian Orthodox Church? And do her preferences differ from the tastes of her foreign “colleagues”?
Shopping center of Christ the Savior
Getting a jacket in order at this dry cleaner costs, in general, inexpensively - 385 rubles. Its very location is unusual - on the territory of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (CHS). You can get there from the Moskva River embankment, bypassing the Refectory. “Here we have our own mini-dry cleaning service, servicing 15 churches,” the receptionist shrugs. “Why shouldn’t ordinary people take advantage of it at the same time?” However, these are pennies. But corporate events in the halls of the KhHS are a real goldmine. Thus, renting the Refectory Chamber for 200 people costs 70 thousand rubles, another 3–4 thousand per person for food, alcohol and banquet services. The clerks' parties in the largest cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church have been going on for several years. For example, in the magazine of blogger Maxim Dementiev it is easy to find photographs from the celebration of the 125th anniversary of Deutsche Bank, held in the Hall of Church Councils in 2006...The Society for the Protection of Consumer Rights (CPPR) recently became interested in the temple's vigorous commercial activities. During the inspection here, in addition to dry cleaning and banquet halls, a car wash, a tire repair shop, a car service center, paid parking, and many shopping stalls were discovered. “In fact, on the territory of the temple there is a business center, providing consumers with a wide range of commercial offers (...). The existing sign “Cathedral of Christ the Savior” does not comply with the legal requirements for commercial enterprises,” the OZPP is categorical. However, the organization lost the lawsuit against the structures of the Russian Orthodox Church: the court recognized that the goods are not sold, but given away, the price tags are actually not price tags at all and it is not the price that is indicated on them, but the recommended donation amount.
Most people are still concerned not about the lack of cash register equipment, but about the moral side of the issue. Representatives of the church are trying to prove that it is not they who are engaged in commerce, but Cathedral of Christ the Savior Foundation, not legally connected with the Russian Orthodox Church. The argument is unconvincing. Business cannot forget how at one time faxes arrived from district administrations, in particular “Konkovo”, with requirement to transfer a minimum of 20 thousand rubles to this very KhHS Fund. Many entrepreneurs agreed, not wanting to quarrel with Moscow officials. Now that the work is completed, the cathedral, built literally by the whole world, is rapidly turning into an entertainment, shopping and business center. The story of the girls from the group Pussy Riot, who allegedly insulted an Orthodox shrine, does not add any beauty.
But banquet halls and car washes are just the tip of the iceberg. The annual turnover of the KhHS Foundation together with its three subsidiaries (PSC Kolokol, Venets-F LLC and Vrata-4 LLC) does not exceed 40 million rubles. True, the fund, according to the RBC daily newspaper, should receive another 372 million from the capital’s budget this year. The commercial income of all enterprises controlled by the Russian Orthodox Church, according to the most conservative estimates, amounts to 600 million rubles, and the value of their assets is approaching 2.3 billion.
Owners of factories, churches, sandwiches
The church has been accused more than once of being commercially inclined. In the 90s, its subsidiaries were convicted of duty-free import of cigarettes and trade in vodka, and at the same time oil export through JSC "International Economic Cooperation". According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, in the period from 2003 to 2010, the Russian Orthodox Church, through JSC Vital CJSC, owned a quarter of BMW Rusland (the remaining 75% was the Austrian BMW Osterreich Holding), which imported prestigious foreign cars to Russia. Now the company has been liquidated, and in its place (at the address Khimki, Panfilova Street, possession 19, building 1) there is BMW Rusland Trading LLC, also three-quarters owned by the Austrians. Its annual turnover in 2010 exceeded 46 billion rubles.In general, the investment preferences of the clergy are not original: construction, restaurant and hotel business, wholesale and retail trade, agriculture and food production. In the capital region, the “pearls” of business are the four-star Danilovskaya Hotel and OJSC Ritual Orthodox Service (it, together with affiliated companies, accounts for at least a tenth of the Moscow market for funeral services), in the Urals - a stone-processing and porcelain factory, a house-building plant, and The Novosibirsk diocese for a long time owned a share of the Podorozhnik sandwich chain. The Danilov stauropegic monastery in the capital is particularly diligent. The total turnover of the enterprises owned by him in 2010 reached almost 180 million rubles.
The financial sector does not leave the Russian Orthodox Church indifferent either. Evgeny Parkhaev, general director of art and production enterprise "Sofrino" (HPP "Sofrino"), who has been supplying candles, crosses, icons and other church utensils for many years, is also the chairman of the board of directors of Sofrino Bank. The latter is famous for the church dome on its emblem and close ties with the Moscow Patriarchate. It is possible that the money earned by the enterprise of the same name formed the capital of the credit institution. Another near-church bank is JSCB Peresvet. Various religious organizations own 3.29% of its shares, exactly the same amount for the other largest owner, Expocentre CJSC. Finally, ROC owns 0.23% of JSC Bankhaus Erbe. By the way, condemnation of luxury and asceticism is clearly not the marketing policy of the Russian Orthodox Church. Bankhaus Erbe specializes in private banking for wealthy clients, and Sofrino was the first to issue loans for the purchase of yachts and provides sponsorship support for yachting.
What percentage of the total income of the church comes from the activities of commercial subsidiaries? The Russian Orthodox Church does not like talking about its finances. The last large-scale study on this matter was conducted at the beginning of the 2000s by sociologist Nikolai Mitrokhin (currently an employee of the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen). Then he estimated donations, proceeds from the sale of candles, icons, crosses, provision of services and purely commercial activities in $500 million. The so-called non-cash payments also included: gifts in the form of construction and other materials, free business assistance, free work for parishioners. The annual cash turnover of a small city church starts from 3 thousand dollars, a temple in the regional center - from 10 thousand, a cathedral accounts for at least 80 thousand. In general, cash income amounts to 100-150 million dollars, the rest is non-cash.
Revenue from commercial “subsidiaries” of the Russian Orthodox Church (those that disclose such information, and excluding seminaries, gymnasiums and others educational institutions̆) in 2010 was estimated at 600 million rubles, or $20 million, that is, 15–20% of the cash turnover assessment carried out by Mr. Mitrokhin. The press service of His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' did not respond to a request from RBC magazine about the organization’s economic activities and income. But if you believe these figures, the Russian Orthodox Church is not too different from its foreign “colleagues”. The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (GCTS), which is engaged in statistical research, estimates the turnover of all Christian churches in 2012 at $569 billion. “Where does this figure come from? According to our calculations, based on data from the UN and the World Bank, the total annual income of all Christians in the world is approximately $32 trillion, explains Albert Hickman, a researcher at the center. “Our analysis showed: religion accounts for 1.78% of this amount, which is 569 billion.” Experts divide the income of religious organizations into direct and indirect. Their ratio is approximately 70:30. “The first is direct donations to churches. The second is the proceeds of various semi-religious funds, support from the state, as well as income from investment projects of the church,” continues Mr. Hickman.
Thus, quarries or sandwich shops controlled by the diocese are not a unique Russian situation. Christian organizations around the world, trying to increase their capital, make investments in the real sector. And foreign clergy, in pursuit of profit, often find themselves at the center of scandals.
German porn and the Vatican "laundry"
Where is the line between pornography and erotica? This immodest question is very much on the minds of the German Catholic Church. Recently it turned out that the “daughter” of the Weltbild publishing house, wholly owned by the clergy, publishes books like “Take Me Here and Now” or “Dirty Tales.” The Catholic organization bought Weltbild more than 30 years ago and has since invested €182 million in the company. The funds were obtained mainly from the so-called church tax, which was compulsorily levied on parishioners. Its rate is 8–9% of the amount paid by Germans as income tax. In 1998, Weltbild, wanting to expand its market presence, acquired five publishing houses, including 50% of Droemer Knaur, known for its pornographic products. If we talk about the purely financial side, the strategy was successful. Weltbild now has an annual turnover of 1.7 billion euros and is the largest player in the offline sales sector (20% of the German market), and is second only to Amazon in online book sales.How does the church respond to accusations against it? In 2009, she made a cautious attempt to sell Weltbild, but there were no takers to buy it at the stated price. Then the clergy went on an aggressive offensive, posting a press release on the official website of the publishing house, where they accused the media of a targeted attack on them. The essence of the defense was that these books belong to erotica, and not pornography at all, and in addition, they account for less than 1% of the publishing house's turnover. However, the Pope was not convinced: shortly after the press release was published, he criticized the investment policy of the German bishops. As a result, some dioceses, including the Archbishopric of Cologne, sold shares in the ill-fated publishing house. “We cannot make money on weekdays from what we preach against on Sundays,” the head of the archbishopric, Cardinal Joachim Meissner, explained this decision. However, not everyone followed his example. At least 70% of the shares are still in the hands of the German Catholic Church, and Droemer Knaur delights readers with new books like “Sinful Games” or “Sex for Experts.”
Of course, the servants of the Lord direct the bulk of their investments not into dubious, but into completely respectable types of business - real estate and government bonds. According to some analysts, the Catholic Church owns more real estate than any other organization on the planet. In 2006 - the last time the Holy See in the Vatican disclosed financial figures in detail - development activities brought in 32.3 million euros, or 25% of all profits. About 14 million more (about 10% of the profit) were given in dividends and coupon payments on securities owned by the church. In 2008, the Vatican's secret balance sheet was leaked to the press. The document showed that he owned 340 million euros in cash, 540 million in the form of shares and bonds, as well as land and real estate in France, England and Switzerland worth 420 million.
The Pope's financial affairs can hardly be called impeccable either. The head of the Vatican Bank was recently fired in a big scandal. Gotti Tedeschi. When concluding contracts, he chose certain construction companies, despite the fact that their prices were approximately 2 times higher than the Italian average. But the matter is not limited to corruption alone. A windowless, windowless medieval tower, the financial heart of the entire Catholic Church, the Vatican Bank enjoys a controversial reputation in banking circles. It refuses to comply with many international disclosure requirements, and regulators have already caught the institution laundering money. In 2006, an enterprising Italian named Bonaccorsi received 250 thousand euros in subsidies from the European Union to create a fish farm, which he had no intention of building. His son, a priest, deposited this money in the Vatican Bank, registering it as a donation. No additional papers are required from clergy. After several transactions, the funds ended up in the account of a relative of the Bonaccorsi family, a member of the Sicilian mafia group - this attracted the attention of the financial police.
This, in general, cheap case illustrates the general trend. JP Morgan Chase recently closed its Vatican Bank accounts. As Italian newspapers write, over 18 months, 1.5 billion euros passed through them, and, despite significant turnover during the day, they always became empty by closing, which made bankers suspect financial fraud. Earlier, Italian police seized 23 million euros belonging to the Vatican Bank from the accounts of Credito Artigiano. The intermediary bank itself turned to controllers when Vatican representatives refused to disclose the reason for the transfer of funds and the names of the recipients. This story is also among the reasons for Gotti Tedeschi's resignation.
I believe in the matter
When discussing the not always beautiful, and sometimes simply illegal business of the church, it is necessary to note an important point - the influence of religion on the economy and economic growth of a particular country. Economists Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary conducted six studies between 1981 and 1998 international research̆, which formed the basis of their work Religion and Economic Growth. On the one hand, it turns out that people’s piety has a positive effect on GDP dynamics. Faith forces a person to adhere to high moral principles, which have a positive effect on labor productivity. According to the authors, we are talking about frugality, work ethics, honesty and a friendly attitude towards strangers, and a willingness to support them. Another consequence of the influence of religion on society is the desire of believers to get an education, as well as to have a family and children.On the other hand, the habit of citizens to frequently attend church can, on the contrary, have negative consequences. Conducting religious rituals requires resources that are diverted from other sectors. It is easy to conclude from the study: if regular visits to church by some parishioners contribute to the fact that others begin to go there, and the faith of the first becomes more intense (and they show even more diligence, work ethics, etc.), then everything is not bad .
If Sunday services have little influence on people’s minds, then there is no benefit to the economy, but only damage associated with the redistribution of resources. However, this logic is unlikely to please any of the representatives of official confessions. After all, if you follow it, it turns out that the property of the church can be used with greater benefit than now.
© "BBC Russian Service", 08/30/2011
Countless riches of the Russian Orthodox Church
Yuri Maloveryan[…] It is now extremely difficult to estimate the church budget, admits Nikolai Mitrokhin, a researcher at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen.
Mitrokhin is one of the very few Russian researchers who, without belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church, studies it closely. According to him, in the late 90s and early 2000s, there was an information struggle in the Russian Orthodox Church between two groups, and during this struggle, documents were leaked to the press, on the basis of which it was possible to evaluate the financial affairs of the church.
“And now information has been closed to a much greater extent: people have learned to hide even the scanty data that could have been found earlier,” says Mitrokhin.
What makes it difficult to assess the budget of the Russian Orthodox Church is the fact that it actually does not exist: each of its more than 30 thousand parishes is an independent legal entity, each of the 160 dioceses also has its own budget, and the Moscow Patriarchate has its own. […]
10 years ago, Mitrokhin estimated the income of the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole at approximately $500 million. Now, he believes, along with the general economic growth of Russia, Ukraine and other Russian Orthodox countries, “in dollars or euros, the numbers have grown almost by an order of magnitude.” […]
To participate in [...] commercial projects, the church several years ago created the Center for Investment Programs of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2007, the CIP, according to Russian press reports, held presentations of its projects in Berlin, Brussels and London, which included investments in the construction of residential and office buildings in Moscow and other cities, as well as the creation of agro-industrial enterprises at monasteries.
In the Russian Orthodox Church, as Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' said at the bishops’ council in February, there are now almost 800 monasteries operating.
[…] in the last year, disputes have flared up about the return of church property. Throughout the post-Soviet years, the state returned churches and monasteries to both the Orthodox Church and other faiths - but, as a rule, for indefinite and free use. At the end of 2010, a law was passed according to which all religious organizations can demand - and receive back - their “religious property” that was taken away Soviet power. Taking advantage of this law, the Russian Orthodox Church can again, as before the 1917 revolution, become the largest or one of the largest owners in the country.
At the beginning of 2010, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, at a meeting with Patriarch Kirill, said that 12 thousand historical and architectural monuments were to be transferred to the church. It is extremely difficult to estimate their cost, according to the editor of the “Religion” column of the scientific and educational magazine “Skepsis”, candidate of philosophical sciences Alexander Averyushkin.
According to Averyushkin, among the objects already transferred and to be transferred are objects with tourism potential, such as the kremlins of some ancient cities, monasteries on the Solovetsky Islands, on Valaam, in Verkhoturye in the Urals.
“This summer I was in Valaam, there is quite a serious construction going on there, it is being carried out by monks. And there are a dense stream of excursion groups - primarily pilgrims,” says Averyushkin.
Critics of the law on the return of church property, to which the philosopher Averyushkin belongs, complain that under this document the church can lay claim to any building to which it has ever been related - or even not. In the Kaliningrad region of Russia - the former northern part of East Prussia - the Russian Orthodox Church was given former German churches and other property that historically had nothing to do with Orthodoxy.
In addition, during the preparation of the law, as well as during and after its adoption, it was criticized by museum workers and artists who fear that the transfer of ancient monasteries and fortresses to the Russian Orthodox Church will limit access to them for ordinary citizens, and transfer of ancient icons or chronicles will simply put them in danger, because the church, unlike museums, does not know how to properly store such exhibits.
The authorities partly listened to the museum workers: the law included a provision stating that objects and objects from state museum, archival and library funds are not subject to transfer to the church.
The Church of Cyprus has said it is ready to sell its assets and help the island nation emerge from its financial crisis. the site studied published data on the assets of the Russian Patriarchate and calculated where the proceeds from their sale could be invested.
The Primate of the Cypriot Orthodox Church, Archbishop Chrysostomos II, made his statement after a meeting with the President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades on Wednesday, March 20. The archbishop noted that the church could pledge its assets in order to invest the proceeds in government bonds. The primate did not explain what assets he was talking about. But according to the Associated Press, the Church of Cyprus owns a significant fortune.
Business ROC
The Russian Orthodox Church has been involved in entrepreneurship for many years. At the same time, officially the income of the Russian Orthodox Church remains a sealed secret.
The legal entity on behalf of which the Russian Orthodox Church does business is called the “Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.” One of the important sources of income for the Church is the CHS fund, the turnover of which is about 40 million rubles per year.
One of the largest assets of the Patriarchate is the KhPP Sofrino Russian Orthodox Church, which quite officially supplies church utensils, in particular, icons, candles and clothes. However, the last time data on its income was published was more than 15 years ago and amounted to 120 million rubles, during which time the church’s parish grew by two-thirds. In addition, the Russian Orthodox Church owns several large companies providing funeral services.
However, according to RBC magazine, the area of business interests of the Russian Orthodox Church concerns not only candles and icons, but also hotels and factories. In the period from 2003 to 2010, CJSC Vital JSC, controlled by the Russian Orthodox Church, owned a quarter of BMW Rusland; this company was subsequently liquidated by BMW Rusland Trading LLC.
In addition to importing cars, clerics conduct business in construction, restaurant and hotel business, trade, agriculture and food production. For example, the Russian Orthodox Church owns about 40% of the shares of Peresvet Bank, which as of 2012 ranks 84th in the ranking of Russian banks.
In addition, the Russian Orthodox Church owns the Danilovskaya Hotel in Moscow. According to some reports, together with Sofrino, the hotel brings in up to half of the church’s total income, data on which have not been made public since 1997. According to RBC, all commercial enterprises controlled by the Russian Orthodox Church, according to the most conservative estimates, bring in up to 600 million rubles. per year.
What are the assets of the Russian Orthodox Church enough for?
According to the publication, the value of the ROC's assets is approaching 2.3 billion rubles. If the Church follows the example of the Cypriot clergy and decides to sell them to help the state, then the amount received would be enough, say, to dispose of an ownerless chemical plant in Biysk (the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation intends to allocate 2.3 billion rubles for the disposal of the former defense enterprise "Polyex" in Biysk ) or the restoration of Lenfilm (the board of directors of the film studio estimated its revival at 1.5-2 billion rubles). It would be possible to warm most of the inhabitants of the Arctic by laying a heating main there (the Eurasian Development Bank issued a loan of 2.7 billion rubles to Apatit OJSC for the construction of a heating main from Kirovsk-Apatity).
However, 2 billion rubles is too small an amount for reforms within the entire state; it will bring more benefits to the Russian Orthodox Church, analysts say. “The profit received by the Russian Orthodox Church as a result of commercial activities is used to finance the current activities of the church (maintenance of the apparatus and infrastructure, organization of religious events, etc.). In general, the state has no legal grounds to seize the profit of the church. The same applies and to the assets of the Russian Orthodox Church, which the state does not have the right to dispose of at its discretion. Actually, at this stage there is no need for this, since the size of the church’s assets and its income within the federal budget is extremely insignificant, and the reputational damage that the state will suffer. as a result of the actions you have indicated, is extremely large,” said FINAM analyst Anatoly Vakulenko. “As for the support of certain areas of society, the budgetary support provided is significantly more effective than the potential proceeds from the sale of the assets of the Russian Orthodox Church, as, indeed, and other religious denominations."
Church economic activity is a closed topic and little studied, although there are a lot of contradictory rumors about it. The church fathers themselves, for obvious reasons, avoid talking about this. Therefore, talk about the church as a subject economic relations we asked the director of the Institute for the Study of Religion of the Baltic and CIS countries, candidate of historical sciences Nikolai Mitrokhin.
-What is the Russian Orthodox Church as a subject of economic activity?
The Russian Orthodox Church is a giant corporation where hundreds of thousands of independent economic agents operate under a single brand. Starting from small enterprises created by individual priests and ending with church-wide enterprises.
what is the scale of its activities, its share in the Russian economy?
— During the year, the ROC receives from its economic activities the same income as an average metallurgical company. On an all-Russian scale, this is, of course, not much. But besides this, the church controls a number of enterprises that have more significant turnover. In addition, there are donations from public and private companies for various Orthodox programs. And this amount is already two to three times more than the funds that the church earns independently.
— Why are official data on the economy of the Russian Orthodox Church so scarce?
Because the governing bodies of the church themselves do not have clear information about what individual divisions - dioceses, parishes - do. In addition, the church habitually hides all data about its economic activities because many of its sources of funds contradict the expectations that people have of the church. This includes playing in financial markets, exporting oil, receiving quotas from the state for the import of certain goods, etc.
-What funds make up the general church income?
Formally, they should consist of revenues from dioceses and the results of the activities of synodal departments. But according to information officially announced at the Councils of Bishops, income consists of income from the activities of the church-wide enterprise Sofrino and the Danilovskaya Hotel. Plus, the Moscow Patriarchate receives about 50% of its funds from certain operations on the financial market, managing temporarily free funds. And revenues from dioceses account for only about 2.5% of the total. The budget of specific departments of the Patriarchate has never actually been publicly disclosed.
-And what is all this money spent on?
— According to the church, the main budget is spent on the maintenance of three educational institutions of general church significance. But now the largest of them has been transferred to the balance of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, so at the moment the funds are apparently spent on presentations and the “maintenance” of the apparatus. And in case of any emergency expenses, sponsors are attracted. For example, when the Patriarch goes to an orphanage, one of the Orthodox entrepreneurs gives money for gifts.
— What about the restoration of temples?
— No, this is done by the state and state-owned companies. Almost all major corporations have special programs for the construction of temples. The church itself is not capable of building churches or carrying out serious reconstruction of them.
— What, in your opinion, is the tightening of state tax policy towards the church leading to?
— To ensure that in the medium term, priests become civil servants, i.e. received salaries from the state. On the one hand, the church does not want this, on the other hand, it needs to receive government support, otherwise many parishes will soon have to be closed. Only a priest from a large city can provide for himself at the expense of his parishioners, and those who serve in the village feed only from their own garden. And how many years will he endure this situation? I believe that religious organizations must survive on their own. But while we see that the state finances large church educational programs, the Orthodox encyclopedia is published at the expense of the state, the state is on the verge of starting to fully finance the teaching of the fundamentals of Orthodox culture, and I think things will come to the point that provincial priests will willingly accept this It was before the revolution, the state salary.
— In your opinion, should parachurch production be subject to taxes, along with ordinary entrepreneurs?
I think not. There is a sector of non-profit organizations that pay very serious taxes: 36% of the unified social tax, 13% of salaries. In my opinion, the Russian Orthodox Church, like all religious organizations, is the same non-profit organization. Another thing is that the state should not put up with the fact that somewhere in the province, as was the case, for example, in Tula or Ivanovo region, the priest actually becomes the owner of the distillery and tries to advertise it as a church enterprise, with the funds from which the temple is being built. No one can say for sure how much it costs to build or reconstruct a temple; there are no evaluation criteria. The restoration of this temple can continue for decades, and what, all this time this conditional distillery will work? I think it is necessary to separate such commercial enterprises from non-profit ones.
Perhaps the state, by refusing to transfer some religious buildings into the ownership of the church, seeks to maintain the possibility of influencing the Russian Orthodox Church?
— About 15,000 real estate properties were transferred to the church for long-term lease - in fact, into ownership. No inventory has been taken so far; no one knows what happened to them. The most significant case occurred in Ulyanovsk. A cafe was opened in the building that housed the Diocesan Administration before the revolution. When this building was transferred to the church under the promise of opening a shelter here, the cafe simply re-signed the lease agreement, now with the church. In certain circles there is hope that the church will take ownership of the land, become a major land owner and finance itself with the funds received from the land. But in this case, the question arises: why is the church being returned to its former property, and to people who are descendants of the noble, merchant and Cossack estates, No. Moreover, the church lays claim to a colossal number of objects that did not actually belong to it before the revolution. They belonged to parish communities or landowners, or some other structures.
In addition, there are a huge number of properties that the church does not need. Recently, in Novgorod region I came across an abandoned monastery complex in quite good condition. Theoretically, the diocese could demand it, but what would it do with it? It needs to be restored, a road needs to be built there, monks should be settled there. But there are no funds and no monks. In the Vladimir region, out of 900 existing churches, about 400 were transferred to the church. And if another five hundred buildings are transferred to it (although, as far as we know, it does not ask for them), where will the diocese get the funds to restore them? And so the priests are already complaining that all the companies are sending them away: “We have already given for this temple and this one.” And most importantly, who will go there? The Patriarch, at the last Diocesan meeting, said that the number of parishioners is decreasing. And this has nothing to do with the opening of new churches.
How is parachurch production developing? Are there any enterprises that offer at least some competition to the famous Sofrino?
Parachurch production is developing and has different shapes: From some successful businesses that have million-dollar turnover, to grandmothers and aunties who sew one vestment a week. In principle, this is also a near-church production. Or, for example, a team of carpenters that travels around the diocese and makes iconostases.
There are many large church companies that are comparable in production volume to Sofrino, but they prefer not to advertise themselves. One of the most famous in Moscow is located in the Novospassky Monastery and specializes in the production of small wooden icons with pasted paper images. The Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius is considered the largest manufacturer of candles and printing. And Sofrino is just a brand, and not the most popular one. The Patriarch at every Council of Bishops calls on bishops to buy Sofrino products; they, of course, buy little by little, but they really prefer cheaper goods.
— They say church products are exclusively “environmentally friendly.”
— The Russian Orthodox Church positions all its products as environmentally friendly. In Russia this has prospects. The “Orthodox” brand may well become synonymous with “environmentally friendly”. But no one actually tested these products. It’s just that in Russia there is now low competition in the market for environmentally friendly goods. As soon as it escalates, the Orthodox Christians there will be “crowded” by large companies. An example of this is the story of the “Holy Spring,” which began as a purely American campaign. Manufacturers simply paid a certain amount to the local bishop for help in tax evasion, an Orthodox label with his signature and a promise to spend part of the money on churches. A year ago, the brand was bought by Nestle. And now the same water is advertised without any nods to the Russian Orthodox Church (especially since the bishop has stopped fulfilling his obligations), the emphasis is on a well-known brand. In every region there is bottled water, which is produced by some distillery simply by sticking a label with the image of a local monastery. Therefore, it can be argued that now at least half of the goods produced as “Orthodox” in fact have nothing to do with the church.
-What do you think the prospects for the development of the church’s economy look like?
— It’s difficult to make any predictions here. So far the situation is relatively stable. But on the one hand, the number of people who connect their lives exclusively with the church is growing, on the other hand, the number of non-regular church visitors is decreasing, i.e. consumers of church-related products.
-What factors can influence the improvement of the financial condition of the church?
— The Church must improve its internal management. So that various, as they say in the church itself, “bugs,” that is, priests or church-related figures who receive good incomes, spend them to a greater extent on the church. But this will become possible only with the advent of mechanisms that ensure transparency, division of clergy functions, and maintenance of corporate spirit. So that the thieving priest does not pay a kickback to the secretary of the diocesan administration, but is expelled by the priests themselves. This must be an internal church understanding and decision that we cannot continue to live like this. And although there is already criticism of the episcopate, coming from both fundamentalist and liberal circles, so far the majority are happy with this situation. So any changes are unlikely to be possible in the coming years.
Lyudmila Mekhontseva
