Moscow - cwnews.com - 20081205 - - Alexei II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia since 1990, died this morning. He was 79. Born in Estonia, the future head of Eastern Orthodoxy’s largest autocephalous Church-- and the largest Christian group outside the Catholic Church-- was ordained to the priesthood in 1950 and became Bishop of Tallinn and Estonia in 1961. Elevated to the rank of archbishop in 1964, he served as chancellor of the Moscow patriarchate from 1964 until 1986, when he became Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod.
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