The income of Patriarch Kirill is of great interest not only among Orthodox parishioners, but also among people who are far from the church. There are legends about the state of the Patriarch of All Russia, stories about his earnings and possessions amaze the impression. It is believed that in the 90s he was directly involved in the organization of the oil, tobacco, food and automobile business. At present, he has at his disposal an apartment in the legendary House on the Embankment, a watch worth about 30,000 euros, luxurious private houses in Gelendzhik and Peredelkino, and even a personal fleet. In this article we will tell you what is known about the business of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, his place of residence, the scandals that surrounded him.
Early career
The exact amount of income of Patriarch Kirill remains unknown. We can only say with certainty that he is not a poor man. According to expert estimates, the state of Patriarch Kirill is estimated atseveral billion dollars.
The hero of our article was born in Leningrad in 1946 in the family of a priest. His father was a priest of the Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God, and his mother taught German at school. The family of Patriarch Kirill consisted of an older brother, Nikolai, and a younger sister, Elena.
After graduating from high school, he entered the theological seminary, and then the academy. He was tonsured a monk in 1969 under the name Cyril. Since then, the family of Patriarch Kirill has been a church, his life has been devoted entirely to serving God.
Bishopric
Kirill's career developed very successfully. Soon after graduating from the academy, he was appointed representative of the Moscow Patriarchate at the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Then he headed the Diocesan Council of the Leningrad Metropolis and the Theological Academy as rector.
In 1976, in the biography of Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, he had such a name in the world, an important event took place. He received the rank of bishop, and two years later he managed the patriarchal parishes in Finland.
In 1984 he was appointed Archbishop of Vyazemsky and Smolensk, and two years later he expanded the parish after including the Kaliningrad region. In 1991 he was introduced to the rank of Metropolitan.
During the collapse of the Soviet Union, he took a peacekeeping position, gaining respect among the population. In the 1990s, in modern Russia, the Moscow Patriarchate began to play an important role in political activity. Kirill was actually the second person after Patriarch Alexy. It is believed that he made a great contribution to the stabilizationrelations with the Vatican, reunification with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Patriarchal Throne
By the time of the death of Alexy II in 2008, Cyril was the most famous Orthodox priest in the country. This was facilitated by the TV show "The Word of the Shepherd", which has been broadcast on Channel One since 1995. He worked closely with the federal government, was the author of the concept in the field of church-state relations.
Patriarch Kirill was elected at the Local Council, received 507 votes out of 677 possible. Kirill remains a patriarch today, in this status he often makes visits abroad, where he earned the authority of a person with fundamental knowledge, high intelligence and wide erudition.
He often communicates with Western religious figures, it was under Patriarch Kirill that a historic meeting with the Pope took place. Cyril and Francis met in February 2016 at the International Airport in Cuba.
Home
The main residence where Patriarch Kirill lives is his estate, located in the village of Peredelkino near Moscow. The three-story building is located on a plot of 2.5 hectares. It includes the priest's personal apartments, hotels, a house church, a he alth complex, utility rooms, a food storage box.
In the very house of Patriarch Kirill - luxury interior items that were brought specially from Italy, the facade of the building looks like the Terem Palace in the Kremlin.
OnOn the territory of Russia, he has several more residences. Among the places where Patriarch Kirill lives are mansions in Trinity-Lykovo, on Solovki, on Rublevka.
In Gelendzhik, in the village of Praskoveevka, the construction of a spiritual and educational center on an area of 16 hectares has begun. Some media have reported that this estate will be intended mainly for the summer holidays of the patriarch.
In the 90s, President Boris Yeltsin gave the clergyman a 5-room apartment in the legendary House on the embankment with a total area of 140 square meters. This is the only real estate officially owned by Patriarch Kirill in the world by Vladimir Gundyaev.
Car fleet
Journalists note the priest's rich and varied vehicle fleet. Patriarch Kirill's car, which he uses most often, is an elongated and armored Mercedes-Benz S-Klasse Pullman.
Also, he has at his disposal American SUVs - as many as two Cadillacs. At the same time, they are not considered his property, but are recorded in the Kremlin's special purpose garage.
Kirill often appears on "The Seagull" with a half-century history.
Scandals
The way Patriarch Kirill lives often becomes a cause of indignation among believers, the basis of scandals in the yellow press. The construction of his dacha in Gelendzhik was widely discussed. It all started with the fact that activists of an environmental organization entered the territory of the facility under construction and found out thatAbout ten hectares of a unique forest are fenced with a 3-meter fence. In the very center there was a pretentious building with domes, similar at the same time to a mansion and a temple.
At the same time, according to official information, only two hectares were at the disposal of the Russian Orthodox Church. In addition, this land belonged to the Forest Fund, which means that no capital structures can be erected on it. According to ecologists, from 5 to 10 hectares of valuable tree species were cut down. This was confirmed by images from space. At the same time, Rospotrebnadzor did not record illegal logging.
Details of how Patriarch Kirill lives often testified to his love for luxury items. According to foreign journalists, his fortune is estimated at four billion dollars. It is not easy to confirm or deny this information, since Patriarch Kirill is not required to submit an income declaration.
In 2009, the media noticed that the cost of a watch worn by a clergyman is about 30,000 euros. The scandal erupted when the press service of the Moscow Patriarchate decided to retouch the watch on Kirill's wrist during his meeting with Federal Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov in 2012. Bloggers noticed that in the photo posted on the website of the Moscow Patriarchate, the patriarch's clock was smeared in a graphic editor, while their image was preserved in reflection on the surface of the table.
The scandal around the apartment of Patriarch Kirill flared up in the same year. Public outcry was caused by the trial ofcompensation for damage to the living space of the hero of our article. The defendant was his neighbor, cardiac surgeon Yuri Shevchenko.
It turned out that Lydia Leonova lives in the patriarch's apartment, who claimed that the dust from Shevchenko's renovation contained harmful nanoparticles, causing damage not only to the premises of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, but also to his personal library and unique furniture. The lawsuit was filed for almost 20 million rubles. Criticism was caused both by the amount of the claim and the incomprehensible status of Leonova herself.
The patriarch himself said that he had nothing to do with this matter, and Leonova is his second cousin. At the same time, he assured that the money will go to cleaning books and charity.
Among believers, the very fact of owning an apartment caused indignation, which contradicts the vow of non-possession that every monk takes when taking tonsure.
The Russian Orthodox Church associated this situation with an organized campaign to discredit the patriarch.
Tobacco empire
It is believed that Patriarch Kirill made the basis of his income on a business that he started back in 1993. Then, with the direct participation of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Nika financial and trading group was created. A year later, two humanitarian aid commissions were established under the federal government. They decided what kind of aid could be exempted from excises and taxes, and it was imported through the church, and then sold by commercial structures. In fact, these were cigarettes that were distributed at market prices throughconventional retail chains. At the same time, they did not need to pay taxes on them.
In 1996 alone, about 8 billion cigarettes were imported. It is believed that at that time significant damage was done to the "tobacco kings", who were forced to pay excises and duties, losing to "church tobacco".
The current income of Patriarch Kirill was largely based on the tobacco business. According to experts, when the priest decided to withdraw from the case, about $ 50 million worth of cigarettes belonging to the church remained in bonded warehouses. It is believed that during the criminal war, during the redistribution of the tobacco market, an assistant to deputy Vladimir Zhirinovsky, surnamed Dzen, was killed.
Oil business
Despite the fact that Patriarch Kirill does not officially receive a salary, his fortune is huge. The oil business also played a certain role in this.
It is known that Kirill was not only involved in the Nika fund, but was also the founder of the Peresvet commercial bank, the Free People's Television joint-stock company, and the International Economic Cooperation organization.
In 1996, he began to export oil, while at the request of Alexy II, this business was also exempted from customs duties. The direct representative of the current patriarch was Bishop Viktor (Pyankov). Currently, he permanently resides in America in the status of a private person. In 1997 alone, the company's annual turnover amounted to two billion dollars.
It is currently unknown if Kirill continues to participate inthis business.
Cyril of the Sea
In 2000, it became known about the attempts of the then Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad to enter the market of marine biological resources. In particular, it was about trade in crabs, caviar and seafood. The firm "Region" created by him was given quotas for catching shrimp and king crab from structures associated with the federal government. Their total volume was four thousand tons.
It is believed that this significantly increased the fortune of the hero of our article.
Luxury lover
Kirill's income began to be actively discussed in 2004, when the Center for the Study of the Shadow Economy, organized at the Russian State University for the Humanities, published a monograph on the shadow economic activities of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to experts, at that time Metropolitan Kirill controlled assets, the size of which was estimated at one and a half billion dollars. Two years later they were counted by correspondents of "Moskovskie Novosti". It turned out that their size has grown by about two and a half times.
The patriarch's luxurious motorcades and the services of the Federal Security Service, which he regularly uses, have become a real talk of the town. For example, when a patriarch moves around the Russian capital, all the streets along his path are blocked. All this has repeatedly caused strong dissatisfaction among motorists.
At the same time, for official visits, as a rule, one of the planes of the Transaero company is rented. At the same time, Kirill has his own fleet, buthe uses it exclusively for personal purposes.
In 2016, Kirill's trip to Waterloo Island, which is located near the coast of Antarctica, caused an active public discussion. Russian polar explorers from the Bellingshausen station live there, surrounded by endless ice and gentoo penguins. The priest went to the ends of the earth after meeting with the Pope in Cuba.
It is known that the Il-96 aircraft operated by a special flight squad "Russia" was used to travel to Latin America. About a hundred people accompanied the patriarch on this trip. This airline is directly subordinate to the presidential administration, serving the first persons of the state.
Then it became officially known that the federal government was ready to provide the Russian Orthodox Church not only with air transport. Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the protection of the patriarch by employees of the Federal Security Service, three of the four residences were provided to Kirill by the state (in Danilov Monastery, in Chisty Lane in Moscow and in Peredelkino).
Experts say that from an economic point of view, the Russian Orthodox Church is currently a giant corporation that unites several tens of thousands of semi-independent and independent agents under a single name. These include monasteries, parishes and individual priests.
Unlike most other public organizations, each parish of the Russian Orthodox Church is officially registered as a religious non-profitorganization has a separate legal entity. From the income that the church receives from ceremonies and ceremonies, it does not pay taxes, is not subject to taxation and proceeds from donations and the sale of religious literature.
In the 2000s, the total annual income of the Russian Orthodox Church was estimated by economists at $500 million.
In addition, property assets are actively growing. Since 2009 alone, more than 5,000 churches have been restored and built in Russia. These statistics include churches built from scratch and places of worship transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church as religious property.
Finally, the Russian Orthodox Church receives state funding. The journalists found out that for the period from 2012 to 2015, the ROC and related structures received at least 14 billion rubles from state organizations and from the budget. The money is allocated for the development and creation of spiritual and educational centers, the preservation of religious facilities, as well as their restoration.
The church economy is currently built on the principle of a rigid vertical, in which there is a strict hierarchy and subordination. Patriarch Kirill is at the head of this pyramid.
