“He was a young man with a future: In 1990 he was elected patriach of Moscow and of all Russia. After the ousting of Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, there was a brief period of glasnost in which the KGB archives were opened. Among the documents that tumbled out was the report “Blackbird”/Alexis wrote on his 1968 visit to Rome. It was published last year in the Italian geopolitical review Limes.

As he wrote it, he must surely have felt confident that it would never see the light of day. There is no need to be shocked by the fact that he wrote a report that today seems embarrassing. Only the super-high-minded judge him severely. His motive was to “save the Orthodox church.”

“We knew they had to do this,” Jesuit Fr. John Long, now rector of the Russicum, told NCR, “and sometimes when safe from bugs, say in a train; they would talk about this chore.” ”

*”Only the super high-minded judge him severely.”* That seems to be the right conclusion here. Trevino brings this item up to obscure or distract from the fact that the protest against Constantinople is based on an ecclesiological disagreement over the legitimacy of ecumenism. The Patriarch’s past associations have no real relevance to the restored unity of the Russian Church, as we know perfectly well. To resist or criticise the reconciliation because of such things is a mistake. For the sake of the pastoral good of a fully united Russian Church, oikonomia in such things is clearly preferable to misguided resistance over genuinely minor obstacles. The significance that one attaches to the report seems to be directly proportionate to one’s hostility to the Moscow Patriarchate as an institution. If our bishops did not regard this as any sort of impediment to reconciliation, I’m not sure why it is still an issue for anyone else.

Did the Patriarch assist the KGB?

This would not on its own perhaps disqualify him, but surely you this is a question that should be answered.