Travels with a Patriarch

In August, Patriarch Kirill visited Arkhangelsk region and the Solovetsky Islands. Photographer and journalist Nikolai Gernet was along for the ride.

our little airplane visibly rattled as
it took off from Vaskovo Airport. The journalists exchanged nervous glances. Within a half hour we would be on the Solovetsky Islands, but the grey morning, strong winds and nasty rain did not augur well for photographing the arrival of Patriarch Kirill (photo, lower right).

Someone joked, “Don’t worry, our people have things under control, they’ll come to some agreement with the heavens!”

A joke, sure, but by the time we were descending to Solovki, bright sunlight shone through the airplane windows. The deputy abbot of the monastery, concealing a smile in his thick beard, modestly refused to comment on the weather’s inexplicable reversal. But locals confirmed that it had been raining for several days; things calmed down just before the patriarch’s long-expected arrival.

It was the same in Arkhangelsk. On Saturday and Sunday, when the patriarch was in the city, the locals enjoyed a sunny weekend, strolling along cordoned off Troitsky prospekt. But by Monday everything was back to normal—cold and grey.

kirill’s homilies and speeches to believers are authoritative and easy to understand. Not just locals drank in his every word, but also the national journalists, transmitting their news live from Solovki.

During the patriarch’s speech in Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral, he uttered a phrase about the founding fathers of Solovetsky Monastery, calling their feats “spiritually extreme.”

The journalists immediately flipped open their cellphones and feverishly punched the phrase in as a text messages to their editors. A good journalist knows a headline when he hears one. Test it out on yandex.ru if you like—it is the most-cited phrase from the patriarch’s visit to Arkhangelsk region.

there was one rather tense moment
from the patriarch’s appearance on the square in front the drama theater. The organizers were dealing with final preparations, guards where holding back the multitudes… Priests had lined up, their faces stony and serious, along both sides of a red carpet… There were a few moments of tense silence… Any moment now, the patriarch’s car would be pulling up… Then, suddenly, from somewhere out of the crowd, strolled a mutt of a dog. Happily wagging his tail, he trotted along the carpet, sniffing at the clergymen, who were more than a little taken aback by the absurdity of the situation. Smiles broke out on the priest’s faces, but no one raised a hand to shoo the dog away. The dog, seemingly satisfied with the confusion he had sown, slipped back into the crowd, without disturbing the ceremonies any further.

the most interesting thing at the many events was the people I saw through the lens of my camera. During church services, each person’s eyes, their face, was overcome by a certain expression… Everyone was thinking of something cherished, of things one rarely thinks about outside church walls. And when you succeed in capturing such expressions in a photograph, they defy a cursory look, drawing you in. These are not the faces you see on the street, on a bus or in a store. You have to go to Solovki…