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Web site last updated on 24th December 2007

Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh

 (19 June 1914 - 4 August 2003),

Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church. MA

He was founder and for many years bishop, archbishop then metropolitan of the diocese of Sourozh, the Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate's diocese for Great Britain and Ireland. (The name 'Sourozh' was transferred from the historical episcopal see in the city now named Sudak in the Crimea).

Biography

The future Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh was born Andrei Borisovich Bloom on June 19, 1914, in Lausanne, Switzerland, to Xenia and Boris Edwardovich Bloom. On his mother's side, he was the nephew of the composer Alexander Scriabin.

He spent his early childhood in Russia and Persia. During the Russian Revolution the family had to leave Persia, and in 1923 they settled in Paris where the future metropolitan was educated, graduating in physics, chemistry and biology, and taking his doctorate in medicine, at the University of Paris.

In 1939, before leaving for the front as a surgeon in the French army, he secretly professed monastic vows in the Russian Orthodox Church. He was tonsured and received the name of Anthony in 1943. During the occupation of France by the Germans he worked as a doctor and took part in the French Resistance. After the war he continued practising as a physician until 1948, when he was ordained to the priesthood and sent to England to serve as Orthodox Chaplain of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. He was appointed vicar of the Russian patriarchal parish in London in 1950, consecrated as Bishop in 1957 and Archbishop in 1962, in charge of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Ireland. In 1963 he was appointed Exarch of the Moscow Patriarchate in Western Europe, and in 1966 was raised to the rank of Metropolitan. By mutual agreement he was released in 1974 from the function of Exarch, in order to devote himself more fully to the pastoral needs of the growing flock of his diocese and all who came to him seeking advice and help.

Metropolitan Anthony received honorary doctorates from the University of Aberdeen ('for preaching the Word of God and renewing the spiritual life of this country'); from the Moscow Theological Academy for his theological, pastoral and preaching work; from the University of Cambridge; and from the Kiev Theological Academy. His books on prayer and the spiritual life Living Prayer, Meditations on a Theme and God and Man were published in England, and his texts are now widely published in Russia, both as books and in periodicals.

Metropolitan Anthony's grave is in the Brompton Cemetery in London and is visited often by both Orthodox and non-Orthododox alike. A biography of him, 'This Holy Man' by Gillian Crow was published in 2005.


Being Orthodox Christians in the West

We are here to speak - or to think together - about the Orthodox past of the West because there was a time when the Church was undivided, when Orthodoxy extended throughout both East and West. We are deeply aware that we are in continuity with the undivided Church of the first three centuries and of the fact that the Western denominations have, from our point of view, erred both in doctrine and in their spirituality. And therefore we must reflect on this subject because we are here as people sent by providence into the West to call out from the depth of the Christian Churches their inherent Orthodoxy, what is Orthodox in each denomination. But at the same time we must remain intensely aware that we carry the precious things which we must bring back to the West in earthen vessels, vessels which very often hinder others from discovering what we have to say and to bring. We cannot be proud of ourselves, although we may rejoice in the Orthodoxy which God has given us. I do not believe that there has ever been, either in the East or in the West, a truly Christian society; or that, apart from our proclamation of the faith and what God has been doing both in the East and in the West, we can speak of being Christian: we have yet to become what we are called to be. And so, when we speak of Orthodoxy in the West, of our meeting with other Churches, of our role today, of the fact that we feel we belong to a past, we must realise that we cannot resurrect that past; we cannot go back through the centuries to the time when there was no separation. We must instead love the West in which we live, love it deeply, look at it with understanding, with the eyes of love, and discern in it all that is precious - and indeed all that we ourselves must learn from the West, because we are not here to teach, but to grow together into something great, something that could be Christ's own Church on earth. So let us start this conference with a double awareness of both the incredible beauty and the precious quality of Orthodoxy and of the fact that we are so unworthy of the faith which God has given us. And, at the same time, let us try to understand - as deeply as we can, as lovingly as we can, with an insight which nothing but love and God can give us - the beauty that can be found in what surrounds us. And let us make our contribution, not polemically, but in a spirit of sharing and of love.

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