Estonian Named Patriarch of Russian Church

A 67-year-old native of Estonia was named the new head of Russian Orthodoxy on Thursday, taking the helm of the long-subjugated church as new possibilities open for it and its tens of millions of Soviet believers.

Alexei, metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod, was elected patriarch of Moscow and All Russia by the church’s local council, meeting in the religious center of Zagorsk north of Moscow. He becomes the spiritual leader of the estimated 50 million Russian Orthodox faithful in the Soviet Union, as as well as 750,000 adherents in an independent U.S. church.

He succeeds Pimen, who died last month.

In a pre-election program published in a church journal, the new patriarch, born Alexei Ridiger, spoke out in support of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms, saying they could improve the material and spiritual lives of believers.

A new law being discussed in the Soviet national legislature would end many Stalin-era restrictions on religious groups, such as a ban on Sunday schools for children or charitable work.

A native of Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, who was ordained a priest in 1950, Alexei was elected to the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies, or Parliament, last year, and has worked with other government-sanctioned organizations including the Soviet Peace Fund.

Jane Ellis, an expert on the Russian church at Britain’s Keston College, which monitors religious affairs in East Europe and the Soviet Union, wrote recently that Alexei “has for many years conformed exactly to what the Soviet state expects of senior bishops.”

In the secret-ballot election, Alexei beat out two other candidates, Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev and Galicia and Metropolitan Vladimir of Rostov and Novocherkassk, the chancellor, or business manager, of the Moscow diocese.