Metropolitan Kirill elected to Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia

Congrats go to our Orthodox sisters and brothers on the election of Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk as Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia - spiritual leader of the huge Russian Bloc within Orthodoxy.

From the AP:

MOSCOW – Metropolitan Kirill received 508 of the 700 votes cast during an all-day church congress in Moscow's ornate Christ the Savior Cathedral, the head of the commission responsible for the election, Metropolitan Isidor, said hours after the secret ballot was over.

Kirill defeated a conservative rival, Metropolitan Kliment, who received 169 votes, Isidor said. Another 23 ballots were declared invalid.

It was the first vote for a Russian Orthodox patriarch since the fall of the officially atheist Soviet Union in 1991.

Kirill, 62, will be installed Sunday as the successor to Moscow Patriarch Alexy II, who had headed Russia's dominant church since 1990. Alexy II died Dec. 5, at age 79, after leading the church in a powerful post-Soviet revival.

Only time will tell if Kirill, who is known in Russia as a moderniser (think with the same aire that folks from SSPX view your average post Vatican II Church), will move forward with the thawing between east and West.

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