Daily: The 'Great Onion War' to sever Russian orthodox Influence in Estonia
Estonia's efforts to remove Kremlin influence via the Russian orthodox church have been dubbed "the great onion war," referring to the classic shape of domes on many Russian churches, in a Postimees editorial.
Postimees writes that the roots of the conflict stretch back to Moscow positioning itself as the center of global Christianity — the so-called "Third Rome" (where Constantinople was the second).
In Estonia, this began even during the atheist Soviet occupation, when the Estonian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate (MPEÕK) was set up in 1945, violating Estonia's 1923 agreement with the Constantinople Patriarchate.
A key feature of that Soviet dependency, which continued after Estonian independence was restored, is that the head of the church in Estonia — the Metropolitan of Tallinn and All Estonia — must be approved by the Patriarch of Moscow and the synod of the Russian orthodox church, formalizing Moscow's control. This issue resurfaced following Russia's attempts to subjugate Ukraine, since 2014.
This is now set to change as the Riigikogu prepares for the third and reading of the bill to amend the Churches and Congregations Act, which would eliminate canonical subordination and free the MPEÕK from Moscow's influence.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
