Summary

Same Day – The envelope that 75-year-old patriarch-in-name-only Krasikov has been sent has an Orthodox cross drawn on it. This particular package of photos is full of priests that Krasikov, formerly the highest religious figure in the land under the State, had denounced long ago. Krasikov knows he had to sacrifice a few priests to save the Church from State destruction. Krasikov is not troubled by the denunciations, Khrushchev’s speech, or the past, for he knows he has done what was needed in order to survive. Krasikov was made patriarch by the Council of Bishops because of his political flexibility. By working with the State, and sacrificing a few, the Church, and the many, survived. Krasikov now spends his days working in a children’s sanctuary he has founded near the Church of the Conception of Saint Anna. The sanctuary is intended to...