17-12-2007 - MosPat.ru - Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia has been acknowledged the Man of the Year in the Religion nomination by the Russian Biographical Institute in recognition of his ‘outstanding contribution to the spiritual revival of Russia’. He has become the Man of the Year for the fifth time since the prize was established.

The awarding ceremony took place on December 12 in the Church of Christ the Saviour. In presenting the prize to the patriarch, the Institute’s director A. Rybas stressed the efforts His Holiness made for the restoration of unity of the Russian Orthodox Church formalized by the signing of the Act of Canonical Communion between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

Speaking in response, Patriarch Alexy said, ‘we have been working for it for 80 years. The signing of the Act last May was an act of gathering the Russian diaspora, and today the Moscow Patriarchate and the Church Outside Russia is one Local Russian Orthodox Church’.

Among the prize-winners in the Religion nomination are also Metropolitan Nikolay of Izhevsk and Udmirtia, Archbishop Innokenty of Korsun, cochairman of the commission for dialogue with the Russian Church Outside Russia, Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov), father superior of the Sretensky Monastery, and Archimandrite Siluan (Glazkin), father superior of the St. Sergius’s Monastery of the Trinity in Rostov.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has won the Man of the Year-2007 national prize ‘for the consolidation of Russian statehood’.

Tula governor Dmitry Dudka, prizewinner in the Governor nomination, presented His Holiness the Patriarch with an icon of Our Lady of Kazan executed by Tula masters.

According to the prize’s experts council, the restoration of unity within the Local Russian Orthodox Church has been ‘the most significant event of the year’.