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Alexy II of Moscow

Alexy II
Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus'
Blessed Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow.jpg
Church Russian Orthodox Church
See Moscow
Installed 10 June 1990
Term ended 5 December 2008
Predecessor Pimen I
Successor Kirill I
Orders
Ordination 17 April 1950
Consecration 3 September 1961
by Nikodim of Leningrad
Personal details
Birth name Alexey Mikhailovich Ridiger
Born 23 February 1928
Tallinn, Estonia
Died 5 December 2008(2008-12-05) (aged 80)
Peredelkino, Moscow, Russia
Buried Epiphany Cathedral at Elokhovo
Spouse Vera Alekseeva (1950–1951)

Patriarch Alexy II (or Alexius II, Russian: Патриарх Алексий II; secular name Alexey Mikhailovich von RidigerRussian: Алексе́й Миха́йлович Ри́дигер; 23 February 1928 – 5 December 2008) was the 15th Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Elected Patriarch of Moscow eighteen months prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, he became the first Russian Patriarch of the post-Soviet period.

Alexey Mikhailovich Ridiger's father Mikhail Ridiger (1900–1960), born in Saint Petersburg, was a descendant of a Baltic German family. His ancestor Captain Heinrich Nicolaus (Nils) Rüdinger, the commander of a Swedish fortification in Dünamünde, Swedish Livonia, was knighted by Charles XI of Sweden in 1695. After Swedish Estonia and Swedish Livonia became part of the Russian Empire in the aftermath of the Great Northern War in the beginning of the 18th century, another forefather of Alexy II, Friedrich Wilhelm von Rüdiger (1780–1840), adopted Orthodox Christianity during the reign of Catherine II of Russia. From the marriage with Darya Fyodorovna Yerzhemskaya was born the future Patriarch's great-grandfather, Yegor (Georgi) von Rüdiger (1811–1848).


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