Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

[John Wehling]

Reverend Fathers, brothers, and sisters,

I have heard that Met. Anthony (Bloom) has reposed. Can any of you confirm this? Had he been ill?

Thank you,
Fr John Wehling

[Jurretta J. Heckscher]

Yes, Metropolitan Anthony died peacefully on Monday, August 4, at the age of 89. In poor health for many years, he had recently been suffering from cancer. Memory eternal to this great luminary of contemporary Orthodoxy!

Yours in Christ,

--Jurretta

[John Wehling]

Thank you, Jurretta. May his memory be eternal!

Fr John

[Johanna]

The following was sent to members of our parish. Thought this might be of interest.

In Christ, Johanna


Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh


(Filed: 06/08/2003)

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, who died on Monday aged 89, was the senior Russian Orthodox archbishop in Western Europe, and the best known Orthodox cleric in Britain.

In London he had a congregation of about 2,000 at his cathedral of the Dormition and All Saints, Ennismore Gardens, and he was responsible for at least 20 parishes around the country. A gifted linguist endowed with a beautiful voice, he was also the author several best-selling books of devotion, an admired broadcaster and a moving preacher in other Christian churches, though he cared little for the soft sell of ecumenism; for him, unity always seemed to be on the horizon.

During the long years of Soviet rule Anthony played an important part in keeping alive the faith of his homeland, a role complicated by the fact that his church owed spiritual allegiance to the Patriarch in Moscow but remained politically opposed to the Soviet regime. This involved him in occasional friction, when he said things that his fellow Orthodox clergy behind the Iron Curtain could not.

Perhaps more influential was the celebration of the beautiful Easter services at his cathedral. As matins began, he would emerge from the behind the ikonostasis to encourage the congregation, as they stood waiting in the dark, to speak up with their responses - which the BBC were to broadcast in the only service that many in the Soviet Union would hear.

Andre Borisovich Bloom was born at Lausanne on June 19 1914. His father was a member of the Russian Imperial Diplomatic Service, and his mother a half-sister of the composer Alexander Scriabin; Molotov, Stalin's comrade, was also a relative.

Andre spent his earliest years in Persia, where the memory of shepherds - "minute against the hostile backcloth of the vast Persian plain" as they protected their flocks - made him a vivid preacher on the Good Shepherd. After the Russian Revolution, the family set out through Kurdistan and Iraq. When they sailed for Britain in a leaking ship, he hoped to be shipwrecked because he was reading Robinson Crusoe. Instead, he was put ashore at Gibraltar where the family's luggage was mislaid; some 14 years later it was returned with a bill for £1.

The family finally settled in Paris, where the father became a labourer and the son went to a rough school. Andre evinced an early suspicion of Roman Catholicism, which prompted him to turn down a place at one excellent school when the priest in charge there hinted that the boy might convert.

But he was an unbeliever until he was persuaded to attend a lecture by an Orthodox priest in which the vision of Christanity so affronted him that he decided to check the Gospels for himself, choosing St Mark's because it was the shortest. It was while reading that he suddenly became aware of someone standing opposite him, and realised it was Christ. The resulting certainty never left him.

After starting to study Medicine at the Sorbonne, Bloom enlisted in the French Medical Corps in 1939. He remained in France throughout the war, serving partly with the Maquis. On one occasion, he was arrested by some Germans and subjected to a long interrogation in which he was asked what he thought of National Socialism.

"I assumed that I was going to be be carted off to a camp anyway," he recalled many years later. "So I decided to tell the truth. I told them that I hated their system, and it would soon be overthrown by their enemies." After a long pause his interrogator replied: "Quickly, out through that door. It isn't guarded." So he escaped.

At the end of the war Bloom found himself accompanying de Gaulle's bodyguard in the triumphal entry into Paris; he remembered taking cover from snipers as the General ignored them.

Despite the rigours of war, Bloom soon realised that the military life was a good environment for ascetic training. In 1943, he completed his medical studies and secretly became a monk. He made his vows before Athanasius, a monk of the Valamo monastery in Finland, and was given the name in religion of Anthony. But since it was impractical for him to enter a monastery he was told to spend eight hours a day in prayer while continuing his medical work. When he asked about obedience, he was told to obey his mother.

In 1948 Father Anthony was ordained priest, and the following year he came to London as chaplain to the Anglican/Orthodox Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. Two years later he was appointed vicar of the Russian church of St Philip. In 1953, he was appointed hegumen; in 1956 archimandrite and in 1977 an assistant bishop. He then became a diocesan bishop for Great Britain and and eventually Metropolitan of Sourozh, a nominal see in the Crimea, and acting Exarch of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia in Western Europe.

In 1974 he was deprived of the latter position for having written to the Times, in his own name and that of the clergy and believers, disowning criticism of Alexander Solzhenitsyn by a senior bishop of the Moscow patriarchate. Nevertheless, there was no attempt to prevent him continuing with the visits to Russia he had begun to make in the early 1960s.

At the same time he started to make a series of broadcasts on BBC Television's late night Epilogue. The Corporation was not entirely confident at first: it feared that the combination of his Russian-French accent, issuing from behind a generous beard, and his refusal to use a script would lead to problems. But his transparent spiritual qualities and ability to speak fluently for a set number of minutes, made him an instant success.

His first book, Living Prayer, became a best seller and was translated into 10 languages. He also took part in a memorable series of broadcast discussions with the atheist Marghanita Laski, in which he said that her use of the word "belief" was misleading. "It gives an impression of something optional, which is within our power to choose or not. . . I know that God exists, and I'm puzzled to know how you can manage not to know."

Anthony soon found himself in great demand, spending much of his time preaching in non-Orthodox churches, taking retreats, giving talks and acting as confessor. He regularly spoke in hospitals, particularly about death, drawing on his experience as a cancer specialist. He received honorary doctorates from Cambridge and from the Moscow Theological Academy.

But although open to all, Anthony retained a deep suspicion of the Catholic Church, likening Pope John Paul II to a weed because of his constant travelling. When the Pope visited Britain in 1982, Anthony was seen on television being embraced by him, but on returning home afterwards he symbolically brushed the experience off his sleeve. Yet when Cardinal Hume died he delivered a moving obituary of him on the BBC's Russian service.

Although a loner and difficult to work with at times, Anthony was never aloof. Like all Orthodox bishops he was easily accessible to his flock, and this could have comical results. When one parishioner rang to say that "Peter" had died and asked for prayers, the Arhchbishop immediately complied, later asking when the funeral would be. "Oh, there won't be one," he was told. "We flushed Peter down the loo." Peter turned out to be a budgerigar.

Inscrutability was also part of his make-up. When one parishioner pressed him on the question of whether God was as much Mother as Father he said: "I don't know. The last time I spoke to Him, She didn't tell me."

Anthony loved going to children's camps, allowing himself to be drilled and taking part in playlets, usually as a surgeon, dressed always in monastic garb. "I always wear black when I operate," he would say with a chuckle.
As a monk, he was expected not to laugh, but he would look amused as he explained that he was quite prepared to be told he was a crackpot. He would then go on, "Even if I am a crackpot, I'm a lot steadier and more normal than some people you might call normal. I've been a doctor and a priest without showing much sign of mental derangement."
--

[Fr Averky]

Dear Jurretta,

Thank you for your confirmation. Thank you very much, Johanna, I did not know very much about Metropolitan Anthony, but I respected him and his writings. May his memory be eternal!

Warmest greetings, Father!

hieromonk Averky

[M A Jackson-Roberts]

In response to Father John Webling, I can sadly confirm that Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh departed this life last Monday (4th August); his obituary was in The Times of London on Wednesday.

His death leaves the UK immeasurably the poorer. Though he was very self-effacing in his impact upon national life and consciousness, he could perhaps have been a major force for extending knowledge of the Orthodox faith, but then he was in his 80s when he died. His main legacy will of couirse be his writings, and the recollection of those who met him in person. My own particular sorrow stems from the fact that I shall never now have the chance to hear him preach in the flesh.

The obituary notice makes it plain (to a discriminating and numerically restricted readership) just how much of a loss his passing means: every bit the equal of Cardinal Basil Hume (of blessed memory - and himself a Benedictine monk).

the seeker

[M A Jackson-Roberts]

PS to my last post: I owe Father Wehling an apology for mis-spelling his name. And in answer to his question, Metropolitan Anthony had apparently been suffering from cancer for some while past.

the seeker

[John Wehling]

Thank you all for your responses, and please don't worry about misspelling my name.

I never met Met. Anthony, but one of my former professors used to know him well and confessed to him regularly. She loved and respected him very much, and liked to relate stories and experiences of him.

May his memory be eternal.

Fr John

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear all,

I have just returned from my time away in the north of England with the youth of our diocese. It does me good to 'see' you all again.

You know, thanks to the postings of John, Juretta, Johanna and others, that on Monday afternoon, the day on which the Church commemorates St Mary Magdalen, Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh reposed in the Lord. He had received holy anointing a few hours before.

For those of you who did not know of Metropolitan Antony while he was in this life, he was truly a most remarkable and holy servant of God and His Church. For most Russian Orthodox in Great Britain, the life of the Church and the person of Metropolitan Antony have long been inseparable: I could copy here the words that Derwas Chitty penned in reference to Athanasius of Alexandria, that the Church 'knew that Christ reigned on the bishop's throne in Alexandria in the person of its occupant'. This has always been the case for most of us with respect to Metropolitan Antony.

Antony was a bishop for over 40 years, the founder of the Russian Church in Great Britain, sometime exarch of the Russian Church (Moscow Patriarchate) in all of Western Europe - though he was granted his request for release from this position after 11 years, in order more fully to devote his attention to the church in Great Britain. During the Communist regime and persecutions in Russia, Metropolitan Antony's radio addresses into that country and worldwide via the BBC were, for countless tens of thousands and perhaps millions of ecclesiastically-deprived Russians a sole voice for the Gospel. In an age when proclaiming the Gospel was forbidden and priests who did so were hunted down, Metropolitan Antony was for Russia the spiritual father 'from afar' that the Communist government would not allow them to have up close and immediately. A dear Russian lady once told me, 'He [Metropolitan Antony] was the father of us all. He taught and he prayed, and we listed and were kept alive'.

One of the great gifts that Metropolitan Antony bequeathed to the Russian Church in Great Britain was an ongoing connection to the Moscow Patriarchate. Even during the darkest periods of Communist persecution in Russia, when the Church in Moscow was required to persevere in prayer and holiness in her own borders and not externally, and it would have been all too easy (and in many cases, practical and reasonable) for the exarchate and diaspora churches to sever connections, Antony ensured that the church in Great Britain always regarded the Church in Russia as her mother -- even when it was nearly impossible to do so. Moscow and London have sometimes had disagreements and challenges, as any parent and child will have, but Antony struggled with all his energy to ensure that the Diocese of Sourozh (the Moscow Patriarchate church in Great Britain) developed as a strong and vibrant church in her own way, while never breaking the connection with the Church that gave her birth.

It is hard for me to imagine a hierarch of the Church who has touched the lives of more people in our present day than Vladyka Antony. His books have been translated into myriad languages, his homilies transcribed and distributed across the world, his lectures and talks recorded and shared. He spoke always with the calm authority that was borne out of his love of Christ and conviction of the truth; yet he always did so with an air of absolute and never false humility. In a conversation he had with me last year, Metropolitan Antony's constant refrain in our discussion was, 'But I have never been a very good monk'. All I could think, then as now, was that I could easily gather together a few thousands who would disagree.

Those of us in this diocese have lost a remarkable father in this life, and I think it reasonable to say that his repose will be felt and mourned across the world. But we have another intecessor in heaven, for whom we continue to offer our prayers, and who surely continues to pray for us.

May his memory be eternal.

INXC, Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

Some further information on the repose of Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh:

A photograph and brief tribute are found on the Diocese of Sourozh website:
http://www.sourozh.org/
(Also in Russian here (http://www.sourozh.org/index_ru.htm).)

Extensive information on his life, work and person are available on a web site dedicated to him:
http://www.metropolit-anthony.orc.ru/eng/
(Also in Russian here (http://www.metropolit-anthony.orc.ru/index.htm).)

INXC, Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

Details on the funeral of Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh.

For those in the UK who are planning to attend the funeral of Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh, or for those elsewhere in the world who are making a special journey to England especially for this service, the details are as follows:

Wednesday, 13 August:

8.30 a.m. - Divine Liturgy 11.00 a.m. - Funeral 3.00 p.m. (approx.) - Burial at Brompton Cemetary

The Liturgy and Funeral will take place at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral at Ennismore Gardens, London.

Those requiring travel details are welcome to contact me by e-mail (http://www.monachos.net/feedback/email_webmaster.shtml).

INXC, Matthew