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ილია II
Ilia II |
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His
Holiness and Beatitude, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, the Archbishop of Mtskheta-Tbilisi and
Metropolitan bishop of Bichvinta and Tskhum-Abkhazia
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Church
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Installed
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December 25, 1977
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Term
ended
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Incumbent
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Predecessor
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Personal
details
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Birth
name
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Irakli Ghudushauri-Shiolashvili (ირაკლი ღუდუშაური-შიოლაშვილი)
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Born
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4 January 1933
Vladikavkaz, Russia |
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Denomination
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Occupation
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Catholicos-Patriarch
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Profession
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Ilia II
(Georgian: ილია II), also transliterated as Ilya or
Elijah (born January 4, 1933), is the current Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia
and the spiritual leader of the Georgian Orthodox Church. He is officially
styled as Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, the Archbishop of Mtskheta-Tbilisi and
Metropolitan Bishop of Bichvinta and Tskhum-Abkhazia, His Holiness and Beatitude Ilia II.
INTERNET
SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilia_II_of_Georgia
Biography
Ilia
II was born as Irakli Ghudushauri-Shiolashvili (Georgian:
ირაკლი ღუდუშაური-შიოლაშვილი) in Vladikavkaz, Soviet
Russia's North Ossetia. His parents hailed from Georgia,
particularly, the Kazbegi district; his father, Giorgi Shiolashvili,
was from the village Sno, and his mother, Natalia Kobaidze, from the village
Sioni. The Shiolashvili were an influential clan in the highlands of Khevi.
Irakli
Ghudushauri graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary and was
ordained, under the name of Ilia, a hierodeacon
in 1957 and hieromonk
in 1959; he graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy in 1960 and
returned to Georgia, where he was assigned to the Batumi Cathedral
Church as a priest. In 1961, he was promoted to hegumen and
later to archimandrite. On August 26, 1963, he was chosen to be
the bishop of Batumi and Shemokmedi and appointed a patriarchal
vicar. From 1963 to 1972 he was also the first rector of the Mtskheta
Theological Seminary—the only clerical school in Georgia at that time.
In
1967, Ilia was consecrated as the bishop of Tskhumi and Abkhazeti
and elevated to the rank of metropolitan in 1969. After the death of
the controversial Patriarch David V, he was elected the new Catholicos-Patriarch of Georgia on December 25,
1977.
The
new patriarch began a course of reforms, enabling the Georgian Orthodox Church,
once suppressed by the Soviet ideology, to largely regain its former
influence and prestige by the late 1980s. In 1988 there were 180 priests, 40
monks, and 15 nuns for a congregation variously estimated as being from one to
three million. There were 200 churches, one seminary, three convents, and four
monasteries. During the last years of the Soviet Union, he was actively
involved in Georgia's social life.
The
patriarch oversaw the publication of a linguistically updated, modern Georgian
version of the Bible, which was printed in the Gorbachov-era.
The
patriarch joined the people demonstrating in Tbilisi against the Soviet rule on
April 9, 1989, and fruitlessly urged the protesters to withdraw to the nearby Kashueti
Church to avoid the bloodshed. This peaceful demonstration was
dispersed by the Soviet troops, leaving behind 22 dead and hundreds
injured. During the civil war in Georgia in the 1990s, he called the
rival parties to find a peaceful solution to the crisis.
From
1978 to 1983, Ilia II was co-president of the World Council of Churches (WCC), an ecumenical
organization the Georgian Orthodox Church had joined with other Soviet churches
in 1962. In May 1997, a vocal group of conservative Orthodox clerics accused
Ilia II of participating in "ecumenical heresy" and threatened
schism. The patriarch hastily convened the Holy Synod and announced withdrawal
from the WCC. In 2002, the then-president of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze and Ilia II signed a concordat
whereby the Georgian Orthodox Church was granted a number of privileges, and
holders of the office of patriarch were given legal immunity.
Awards
and recognition
As
patriarch, he has received the highest Church awards from the Patriarchs of the
Orthodox Churches of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria,
Russia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and
almost all other Orthodox Churches. As a productive theologian and church
historian, he was conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Theology from St. Vladimir's Orthodox
Theological Seminary in New
York (1986), the Academy of Sciences in Crete (1997) and the
St. Tikhon's Orthodox
Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania (1998). Ilia II is an Honorary Academician
of the Georgian Academy of Sciences (2003)
and Hon. Fellow of the American School of Genealogy, Heraldry and Documentary
Sciences. In February 2008, his grace was awarded the David Guramishvili Prize. For its supporting
views regarding the monarchical restoration of the House of Bagration in
Georgia, Patriarch Ilia II received the Grand Collar of the Order of the Eagle of Georgia from
Prince David Bagration of Mukhrani.
Views
on constitutional monarchy
Ilia
II has a reputation as a proponent of constitutional monarchy as a form of
government for Georgia. On October 7, 2007, he publicly called in a sermon for
consideration of establishing a constitutional monarchy under
the Bagrationi dynasty (which the Russian
Empire had dispossessed of the Georgian crown early in the 19th century).
The call coincided with rising confrontation between the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili and the opposition, many
members of which welcomed the patriarch's proposal. In June 2018 he gave an
official blessing and performed the wedding ceremony for Prince Juan de Bagration-Mukhrani
and Kristine Dzidziguri at Svetitskhoveli Cathedral.
Ilia
II and Russia
During
the August 2008 Russo-Georgian War, Ilia II appealed to the
Russian political leadership and the church, expressing concerns that "the
Orthodox Russians were bombing Orthodox Georgians", and dismissing the
Russian accusations of Georgia's "genocide"
in South
Ossetia as a "pure lie". He also made a pastoral visit, bringing
food and aid, to the Russian-occupied central Georgian city of Gori
and the surrounding villages which were at the verge of humanitarian
catastrophe. He also helped retrieve bodies of deceased Georgian soldiers and
civilians. Ilia II also blessed the September 1, 2008 "Stop Russia"
demonstrations, in which tens of thousands organized human
chains across Georgia.
In
December 2008, Ilia II visited Moscow to pay a final farewell to Russia's late Patriarch Alexy II. On
December 9, 2008, he met Russia's President Dmitry
Medvedev, which was the first high-level official contact between the two
countries since the August war. Later, Ilia II announced that he had some
"positive agreements" with Medvedev which needed "careful and
diplomatic" follow-up by the politicians.
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[PHOTO SOURCE: http://orthochristian.com/78443.html]
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Initiative
to incline Georgia's declining birth rate
In
the late 2007, concerned with Georgia's declining birth rate, Ilia II offered
to personally baptize any child born to a family that already has at least two
children, as long as the new child was to be born after his announcement. He
conducts mass baptism
ceremonies four times a year. According to the church official, the patriarch's
initiative spurred a national baby boom, because being baptized by the
Patriarch is a considerable honor among adherents of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Ilia II has more
than 19,000 godchildren
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Ilia II surrounded by
children in Sameba Cathedral, Photo by Ana Marshania
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Approval
ratings
Ilia
II was called "the most trusted man in Georgia" by CNN in 2010, and had the
highest favorability rating among Georgian politicians (94%), according to a
November 2013 National
Democratic Institute for International Affairs poll.
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People attend a rally marking the Day of Family
Purity and opposing the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia in
Tbilisi on May 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Vano SHLAMOV (Photo credit should read
VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images)
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Views
on LGBTQ+ community and other issues
In
2013, Ilia II described homosexuality as a disease and compared it to drug
addiction. He urged the Georgian authorities to stop a gay rights rally planned
for Tbilisi on 17 May 2013 to mark International Day Against
Homophobia, stating that the rally was a "violation of the majority's
rights" and "an insult" to the Georgian nation. Following his
comments, thousands of Georgians, led by Georgian Orthodox priests, took to the
streets of Tbilisi
to protest the gay rights
rally. Due to escalating violence against the rally's participants the
rally had to be abandoned and the activists driven in a bus to safety by the
police. In his response to the event, Ilia II of Georgia deeply condemned any
violence.
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Family Purity Day at 12pm in Tbilisi, Georgia
[May 17, 2018]
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://ge.kavkazplus.com/news.php?id=17366#.XC98181S_IV]
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In
his sermons Ilia II has condemned homosexuality, abortion, and demanded
television be censored to remove sexual content, has denounced school textbooks
for "insufficient patriotism", lectured against what he calls
"extreme liberalism" and warned against "pseudo-culture"
from abroad. He has opposed attempts to give other confessions equal status
under Georgian law and has condemned international educational exchanges and
working abroad as "unpatriotic".
In his Easter message this week, Patriarch Ilia II declared: "This happens because of the desire and decision of the parents. It is a horrible murder of an innocent, helpless creature. And the doctor is an accessory to this murder. When the country is in such a difficult demographic situation, I think that the government must pass a law banning abortions, with just a small number of exceptions, of course."[https://www.rferl.org/a/georgia-sex-selection-abortion/24979979.html]
Through
his anti-abortion stance, however, he has single-handedly increased Georgia's
birthrate since 2008. After the war with Russia, the country lost millions of
lives and suffered immense poverty, decreasing the population. Through
promising to personally baptize the third child of each family, he
"diminished [abortion rates] by 50 percent from 2005 to 2010 [and raised
the] birth rate 25 percent higher than it was in 2005." "Fertility
changes of this magnitude are not extremely common; many governments would kill
for the ability to engineer this kind of policy. But Georgia’s case is unique:
comparatively homogenous societies where one highly-respected religious leader
has the social capital to induce these kinds of changes are extremely rare. The
United States has never had that kind of social homogeneity, nor will it
ever."
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OTHER
LINKS:
Georgian
Orthodox Church is supported by 91% of respondents
Family Purity Day
