The Russian Orthodox Church on Monday denied media reports that there are backstage intra-church struggles for leadership in progress and that the post of head of the church, held by the elderly and ailing Patriarch Alexy II, is one of the objectives.
The comments came after the Holy Synod, the church governing body, divided the diocese of Voronezh and Lipetsk into two dioceses and appointed the head of the former diocese, Metropolitan Mefody, chief of a "metropolitan district" in Kazakhstan.
Some newspapers have interpreted this as a victory by Metropolitan Kirill in a supposed leadership struggle against Mefody.
"We have no internal church struggle, and so it is simply inappropriate to comment on the Synod's decisions in military terms," Moscow Patriarchate spokesman Father Mikhail Dudko told Interfax.
"The appointment of Metropolitan Mefody to the first metropolitan district in the history of the Russian church is a very responsible task, one that far from everyone can cope with. So what it stands for is not so much sending Metropolitan Mefody away as recognizing his administrative merits, and to say that it's a loss for His Eminence Mefody is as inappropriate as to say it's a gain for Metropolitan Kirill. It's everyone's gain, for that matter," the spokesman said.
Dudko also denied rumors that a struggle is under way for the post of patriarch. "With the patriarch still holding, thank God, all power, to say that someone is involved in a secret struggle for his post is simply an insult not only to His Holiness but also to the entire Russian church," he said.