His Holiness Alexy II Dies

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church died yesterday. It may be worth converting to Orthodoxy just for the nifty hats.

His Holiness Alexy II, who died in Moscow on December 5 aged 79, was Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church during an era of profound change.

He became Patriarch in 1990, a year after the Berlin Wall had come down and at a time when the Communist bloc was on the verge of collapse. The Soviet Union had been officially atheist, but under the new Patriarch Russia was to see a remarkable revival of faith and a restoration of the Church's moral authority.

Alexy inherited a Church which, under successive Communist dictators, had seen its places of worship vandalised or neglected to the point of ruin; now many were restored to their former glory, and worshippers flocked to them to attend sumptuous masses, some of which were broadcast on television.

Perhaps the most famous of these churches was the cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, erected in the 19th century in gratitude for the deliverance of the city from Napoleon's armies. It had been destroyed under Stalin to be replaced by an open-air swimming pool, but was now rebuilt, reopening in 1997.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3567608/His-Holiness-Alexy-II.html