Russian Orthodox Church Leader Gives New Credence to ‘protocols’

Metropolitan Johann of St. Petersburg, the second-highest-ranking clergyman in the Russian Orthodox Church, has once again stirred controversy by issuing new anti-Semitic statements.

The 62-year-old church figure has posed the question of whether the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were authentic, referring to the infamous 19th-century tract that purported to expose a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.

The “Protocols” were actually a fabrication written for the czarist secret police.

Johann raised the question in a lengthy article titled “The Struggle for Russia,” published in late February in the notoriously anti-Semitic and hard-line communist paper Sovietskaya Rossiya.

In the article, Johann said a smart man will draw his own conclusions about the “Protocols,” and he juxtaposed excerpts from the “Protocols” with dire descriptions of the state of Russia today.

Last October, Metropolitan Johann stirred controversy with another piece in Sovietskaya Rossiya that explained the killing of Jesus and the imposition of Communist rule in Russia as being part of a single conspiracy, implying it was Jewish-dominated.

After publication of that first piece, a spokesman for the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexei II, issued a statement disassociating the church from Johann’s opinions.

At the time, a church source requesting anonymity said Metropolitan Johann was sick, but would not elaborate.

In the wake of this latest incident, Russian Jews were looking for a stronger statement this time.

Rabbi Adolf Shayevitch, recently elected chief rabbi of Russia and head of Moscow’s Choral Synagogue, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he has written to the patriarch asking him to look into the matter.

And Michael Chlenov, president of the Vaad, the largest Jewish umbrella group in the former Soviet Union, said he intended to raise the matter with Alexander Kazha, the Russian patriarch’s liaison to the Jewish community.