“Now the Church is the Church of the people and for the salvation of the people”translated

On November 1, 2026, on the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Alekseevsky Stavropegic Convent in Moscow.  At the end of the Liturgy, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church addressed the believers with the Primate’s word.

Dear bishops, fathers, mother abbess!

I would like to heartily congratulate you all on this wonderful day!

Having gone through difficult trials, our Church, our country, our Orthodox people entered a special zone of historical favor.

I have already spoken about this, but I will say it again: even tsarist times, when the Orthodox Church was a state church, when its patron was the sovereign-emperor himself, cannot be compared with the present in how favorable they are to church service. Yes, the Church was a state church, officially headed by the sovereign-emperor, but the Church was actually ruled by the chief prosecutor of the Holy Governing Synod - an official who appointed bishops, made decisions on the opening and closing of monasteries, and so on.

It would seem that perhaps there was nothing wrong with this, but the officials were different. Under the Emperor Alexander I...