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The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Hamilton) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 21—3:56 p.m.]
1804. Moscow papers for May 20 publish the following announcement: “The Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR in connection with the death of the Holy Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia [Page 1213] Sergius70 has expressed its deep sympathy to the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.”
This announcement is followed by a six-inch Tass story describing the funeral of the Patriarch which took place on May 18 at the Bogoyavlenski Cathedral71 in Moscow. The item notes that the Metropolitans Alexius,72 Nicolai,73 Ioann,74 11 bishops and more than 1,000 representatives of the Moscow clergy participated in the funeral mass. The service was attended by a large crowd of the faithful. G. G. Karpov,75 head of the Church Affairs Commission, attended the service as the representative of the Council of People’s Commissars.
- Sergey had been Locum Tenens of the Patriarchate from 1925 until his election on September 8 and his investiture on September 13, 1943. The obituary announced that he had died on May 15 in his 78th year.↩
- The Bogoyavlensky (Epiphany) Cathedral was the patriarchal church inside the Kremlin wall.↩
- Alexy (born Sergey Vladimirovich Simansky, in 1877) was the Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod.↩
- Nikolay (born Boris Dorofeyevich Yarushevich in 1892) had become the Metropolitan of Krutitsy and Kolomna in January 1944.↩
- Formerly the Archbishop of Yaroslav and Rostov, Ioann (born Ivan Alexandrovich Sokolov, in 1877) became the Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia, and Exarch of all the Ukraine in February 1944, in succession to the Metropolitan Nikolay.↩
- Georgy Grigoryevich Karpov, President of the Council for Affairs of the Orthodox Church, attached to the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union.↩