Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow

Friedrich Wilhelm von Rüdiger (1780–1840), adopted Orthodox Christianity during the reign of Catherine the Great.

From the marriage with a Polish woman, Sophie Dorothea Jerzębska, was born the future Patriarch's great-grandfather, Yegor (Georgi) von Rüdiger (1811–1848).

His father, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Ridiger (1900–1960), was a descendant of Captain Heinrich Nikolaus (Nils) Rüdinger, commander of a Swedish fortification in Daugavgrīva, Swedish Livonia and knighted by Charles XI of Sweden in 1695.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Alexey Ridiger's father Mikhail became a refugee and the family settled in Estonia, first in Haapsalu where a shelter was provided by priest Ralph von zur Mühlen.

Alexey Ridiger (born Aleksei Rüdiger) was born and spent his childhood in the Republic of Estonia that had become a Russian Orthodox spiritual center and a home to many Russian émigrés after the Russian October Revolution in 1917.

He was baptised into the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church.

From his early childhood Alexey Ridiger served in the Orthodox Church under the guidance of his spiritual father, Archpriest Ioann Bogoyavlensky.

He attended Tallinn's Russian Gymnasium.

Later Mikhail moved to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, where he met and married in 1928 to Yelena Iosifovna Pisareva (1902–1955), who was born and later died there.

Patriarch Alexy II (or Alexius II, Патриарх Алексий II; secular name Aleksei Mikhailovich Ridiger Алексе́й Миха́йлович Ри́дигер; 23 February 1929 – 5 December 2008) was the 15th Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Alexey Ridiger's father graduated from the theological seminary in Tallinn in 1940 and was ordained a deacon and later a priest and served as the rector of the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Tallinn.

Later, he was a member and the chairman of the Diocesan Council in Estonia.

Patrilineal family tree

After the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940, Alexey's family was listed for arrest in order to be deported from Estonia according to the Serov Instructions, but were not found by the NKVD because instead of staying in their home they were hiding in a nearby hovel.

During the occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany (1941–1944) Alexey with his father Mikhail, who had become an Orthodox priest on 20 December 1942, visited the Soviet prisoners of war in German prison camps in Estonia.

Such activity was tolerated by the German occupational authorities because it was seen as effective anti-Soviet propaganda.

After Soviet forces returned to Estonia in the autumn of 1944, unlike most of the people with Baltic German roots, the Ridiger (Rüdiger) family chose to stay in Estonia instead of evacuating to the West.

During the war Joseph Stalin had revived the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union.

Having been closed during the war time, after the Soviet annexation of Estonia the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Tallinn was reopened in 1945.

Alexey Ridiger, who had become a Soviet citizen served as an altar boy in the cathedral from May to October 1946.

He was made a psalm-reader in St. Simeon's Church later that year; in 1947, he officiated in the same office in the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in Tallinn.

He entered the Leningrad Theological Seminary in 1947, and graduated in 1949.

On 15 April 1950, he was ordained a deacon by Metropolitan Gregory (Chukov) of Leningrad, and on 17 April 1950, he was ordained a priest and appointed rector of the Theophany church in city of Jõhvi, Estonia, in the Tallinn Diocese.

He then entered the Leningrad Theological Academy, and graduated in 1953.

On 15 July 1957, Fr. Alexy was appointed Rector of the Cathedral of the Dormition in Tallinn and Dean of the Tartu district.

He was elevated to the rank of Archpriest on 17 August 1958, and on 30 March 1959 he was appointed Dean of the united Tartu-Viljandi deanery of the Tallinn diocese.

On 3 March 1961 he was tonsured a monk in the Trinity Cathedral of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius.

His name (secular Алексей, clerical Алексий) was not changed when he became a monk, but his patron saint changed from Alexius of Rome to Alexius, Metropolitan of Kiev whose relics repose in the Theophany Cathedral in Moscow.

On 14 August 1961, he was chosen to be the Orthodox Church Bishop of Tallinn and Estonia, succeeding his father-in-law, John (Alekseev), who was promoted to Archbishop of Gorky and Arzamas.

On 23 June 1964, he was elevated to the rank of archbishop.

On December 22, 1964, he was appointed Chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchate and, ex officio, a permanent member of the Holy Synod.

Alexy was one of the presidents of the Conference of European Churches from 1964.

On 25 February 1968, when he just turned 40 years old, he was elevated to metropolitan.

In 1986 he was released from the post of the Chancellor, which he had held since 1961 and which allowed him to be based in the Moscow Patriarchy's headquarters, and transferred to Leningrad; the decision was effectively made by the Council for Religious Affairs and was later presented by Alexy as punishment for his letter in December 1985 to Mikhail Gorbachev with proposals of reforms to church-state relations.

Shortly after Alexy's death, the then Chairman of the Council Kharchev strongly denied that and said the decision was aimed at "defusing the tense emotional atmosphere within Patriarch Pimen's inner circle".

In an earlier interview Kharchev suggested the removal had been requested by Patriarch Pimen "for a year".

In March 1987 he was elected President of the CEC Presidium and Advisory Committee, in which post he remained until November 1990.

Elected Patriarch of Moscow in 1990, eighteen months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he became the first Russian Patriarch of the post-Soviet period.

Alexey Mikhailovich Ridiger was a patrilineal descendant of a Baltic German noble family.

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.