Moscow, Russia - Head of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Old Rite, Mitropolitan Andrian (Chetvergov), died unexpectedly Wednesday evening in Kirov region.
The Moscow headquarters of the church reports that the metropolitan had a heart attack on the bank of the river Gryadovitsa, some 50 kilometers away from Vyatka, when he was heading a traditional cross- bearing procession of the biggest community of Russian Old Believers.
Pilgrims managed to inform the local ambulance. A car with doctors left for the metropolitan’s whereabouts at about 17.00, but the absence of roads prevented them from giving him emergency aid sooner.
The procession with the cross, in which Old Believers cover 150 km from Vyatka to the Velikoretskoye village down the Velikaya River and back, is held annually to commemorate the miraculous appearance of an icon of St. Nicholas which happened in the late 14th century.
The Russian Orthodox Old Belief diocese of Kazan and Vyatka resumed this age-old tradition in 2002 after a long interval. The Vyatka diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church has organized a similar procession with the cross every June since 1989, though small groups of the faithful did it privately in the Soviet time as well.
Old Belief is an especially conservative trend in the Orthodox Church in Russia, which emerged in the 17th century as a result of the liturgical reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon.