Metropolitan Nikodim (

secular name A legal name is the name that identifies a person for legal, administrative and other official purposes. A person's legal birth name generally is the name of the person that was given for the purpose of Civil registry, registration of the birth ...

Boris Georgiyevich Rotov , 15 October 1929 – 5 September 1978), was the

Russian Orthodox The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...

metropolitan Metropolitan may refer to: Areas and governance (secular and ecclesiastical) * Metropolitan archdiocese, the jurisdiction of a metropolitan archbishop ** Metropolitan bishop or archbishop, leader of an ecclesiastical "mother see" * Metropolitan ar ...

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

and

Novgorod Veliky Novgorod ( ; , ; ), also known simply as Novgorod (), is the largest city and administrative centre of Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It is one of the oldest cities in Russia, being first mentioned in the 9th century. The city lies along the V ...

from 1963 until his death. Nikodim was born in

Frolovo Frolovo () is a town in Volgograd Oblast, Russia, located on the Archeda River ( Don's basin), north of Volgograd, the administrative center of the oblast. Population: History Frolovo grew out of the Cossack settlement of Frolov. The firs ...

in south-west Russia. Ordained in 1960 at the age of 31, the youngest

bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

in the Christian world at the time, he went on to become one of the six presidents of the

World Council of Churches The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, most jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodo ...

. According to the

Mitrokhin Archive The Mitrokhin Archive refers to a collection of handwritten notes about secret KGB operations spanning the period between the 1930s and 1980s made by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin which he shared with British intelligence in the early 1990s. Mitr ...

, which claimed deep Communist penetration of the Russian Orthodox Church, Nikodim was a

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

agent whose

ecumenical Ecumenism ( ; alternatively spelled oecumenism)also called interdenominationalism, or ecumenicalismis the concept and principle that Christians who belong to different Christian denominations should work together to develop closer relationships ...

activity with the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC served to further Soviet goals. The KGB assigned Nikodim the codename "Svyatoslav". Nikodim is said to have participated in negotiating a secret 1960s agreement between Soviet and Vatican officials that authorized Eastern Orthodox participation in the

Second Vatican Council The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the or , was the 21st and most recent ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council met each autumn from 1962 to 1965 in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City for session ...

in exchange for non-condemnation of atheistic communism during the conciliar assemblies. Nikodim collapsed and died in 1978 while in Rome for the installation of

Pope John Paul I Pope John Paul I (born Albino Luciani; 17 October 1912 – 28 September 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 26 August 1978 until his death 33 days later. His reign is among the shortest in papal h ...

. The new pope, who also himself died a few weeks later, prayed over him in his final moments.

Bibliography

* * '' Васильева О. Ю.'' Тридцать лет спустя... К истории Поместного Собора 1971 г. // Церковь в истории России. — Сб. 5. М.: ИРИ РАН, 2003. — С. 314–323. * * '' Боровой В. М., прот.'
Митрополит Никодим и церковная ситуация середины XX века
// Личность в Церкви и обществе: Материалы Международной научно-богословской конференции (Москва, 17-19 сентября 2001 г.). — М. : Московская высшая православно-христианская школа, 2003. — 448 с. — С. 215–226. * В память вечную...: Материалы Минского научно-богословского семинара, посвященного памяти высокопреосвященнейшего Никодима (Ротова), митрополита Ленинградского и Новгородского (†1978) / сост., отв. за вып. Н. В. Артимович. — Минск : �. и. 2006. — 120 с. * * * * * * ''Шкаровский М. В.'' Ленинградская Академия и семинария в период испытаний. 1958—1978 годы // Санкт-Петербургские духовные школы в ХХ-XXI вв. — Т. 2. — М. : Издательство Санкт-Петербургской Православной Духовной Академии, 2016. — 512 с. — С. 8-188

References

1929 births 1978 deaths People from Korablinsky District Christian Peace Conference members Burials at Nikolskoe Cemetery Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Saint Petersburg Theological Academy alumni {{Eastern-Orthodoxy-bio-stub