We previously wrote that the rather sudden, although long-predicted, “appointment” of Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) to the so-called Crimean metropolis should be perceived as a large part of the “game of the patriarchal throne”. Among other things, Tikhon’s “appointment” coincided with the resignation of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Dionysius, who had recently been “too friendly with Shevkunov.”
In addition, Metropolitan Leonid of Klin was relieved of the post of “Patriarchal Exarch of Africa,” which had long violated the canonical rights and interests of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, but not as a result of “energetic missionary work” on foreign territory, but for “open friendship with Prigozhin and «Wagner»”. A number of “media resources” of the aggressor write that supposedly now “Kirill… completely controls the situation in the Synod” and that in the Moscow Patriarchate “there is no number 2 person.”
They write that allegedly “for exactly two years the team of Patriarch Kirill tried to uproot Tikhon from the Pskov diocese, which is as close as possible to St. Petersburg and Valdai with all that it entails” and that “Tikhon used these years to literally create his own outpost … turned the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery into “a «new Orthodox center of power», and tried to create a theological academy, organized forums”.
Now that same Tikhon (Shevkunov), in a “farewell speech” to his “Pskov like-minded people,” declared that “dreams come true and quickly pass” and made a fairly frank speech worthy of quotation: “What was Crimea in Ancient Greece, in Byzantium? Kolyma! This is Kolyma! …for them it was a place where people did not live normally! They were sent there! And Chrysostom and Clement. Pope. To Kolyma! Now I’ll go to the resorts of Kolyma,” Tikhon noted. However, it was not for nothing that the “new Chrysostom and Clement” mentioned “Byzantium” because in this gambit for the patriarch’s chair he clearly considers himself in a better position than he tries to show to others.
