Translated material
Chronicle
July 2000. The Ministry of Health became the first Russian government institution whose premises were consecrated by clergy. The ceremony was performed personally by Patriarch Alexy II.
August 2000. There are reports in the media about the president's personal confessor. He is the abbot of the Sretensky Stavropegic Monastery, Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov)
August 2, 2000. Vladimir Putin visited the Pskov-Pechora Monastery on Elijah’s Day and met for 40 minutes with the famous elder Fr. Ioann Krestyankin, left a note in the book of honored guests: “Russia and Russian power are unthinkable without strengthening the moral foundations of society. The role and significance of the Russian Orthodox Church are enormous.”
August 13-16, 2000. The Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church canonized the royal family, adopted a document on the social teaching of the church (Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church), and addressed parting words to the president, in which the head of state was asked to give a new impetus to solving the problem of church property.
Autumn 2001. The Kremlin is discussing plans to revive the Presidential Council for Religious Affairs to regulate state-church relations.
February 2002. A sharp deterioration in relations between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches after the Vatican increased the status of its missionary presence in Russia (replacing temporary apostolic administrations with permanent dioceses headed by a metropolitan). Shortly after this event, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared persona non grata for several Catholic priests and one bishop who carried out their ministry in Russia.
August 2002. Chairman of the Committee on Agricultural and Food Policy of the Federation Council Ivan Starikov proposed adopting amendments to the Land Code, returning to religious organizations the right to permanent, unlimited use of land plots. According to him, traditional faiths should have the right to take as much land as they could cultivate.
June 25, 2003. Speaking to academic circles in Edinburgh, the president said that the secular authorities of Russia are doing everything to bring closer the positions of the Roman Holy See and the Russian Orthodox Church. Vladimir Putin emphasized that he “knows about the opinion of Patriarch Alexy II on this issue.” However, he expects “that relations between the Holy See and the Russian Orthodox Church will develop positively.”
September 2003. The President meets in New York with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, Metropolitan Laurus, and conveys to him an invitation to come to Moscow from Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus'.
November 2003. A delegation of the foreign Russian Orthodox Church arrived in Moscow to negotiate reunification with the Moscow Patriarchate
February 2, 2004. Patriarch Alexy II and the head of the Russian Pension Fund (PFR) Mikhail Zurabov signed an agreement to increase pensions for clergy. In Soviet times, monetary benefits to clergy were paid from church funds. Since 1990, priests have had equal rights with employees, but their length of service until 1990 was not taken into account when calculating pensions.
February 3-4, 2004. The VIII World Russian People's Council proclaimed that the church should deal with geopolitical issues, and also adopted a Code of moral principles and rules in business, which was quickly dubbed the “ten commandments of a businessman.”
February 2004. At the request of the traffic police and with the blessing of Metropolitan Vladimir of St. Petersburg and Ladoga, in Orthodox churches of the northern capital, after the end of the service, parishioners are reminded of the need to comply with traffic rules.