Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

 

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom (6 June 1914 – 4 August 2003) was the Bishop of the Diocese of Sourozh of the Russian Orthodox Church for Great Britain and Ireland.

Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, he spent his early childhood in Russia and Persia, as his father was a member of the Russian imperial diplomatic corps. His mother was composer Alexander Scriabin’s sister. During the Bolshevik Revolution, the family had to leave Persia, and in 1923 they settled in Paris, where the future metropolitan was educated. He graduated in physics, chemistry and biology and got his PhD in medicine from the University of Paris.

In 1939, before leaving for the front as a surgeon for the French army, he secretly took the monastic vows in the Russian Orthodox Church. He was tonsured in monasticism in 1943, receiving the name of Anthony. During the German occupation in France, he worked as a doctor for the French Resistance. After the war, he continued to practice medicine until 1948, when he was ordained as priest and sent to England, to serve as a chaplain of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. He was appointed priest of the Russian patriarchal parish in London in 1950. He was then ordained Bishop in 1957 and Archbishop in 1962, to minister over the Russian Orthodox Church of Great Britain and Ireland (the Diocese of Sourozh). In 1963, he was appointed exarch of the Moscow Patriarchate for Western Europe, and in 1966 he became Metropolite. Upon his request, he was released from the office of exarch in 1974, in order to devote himself entirely to the pastoral needs of the increasingly numerous believers in his diocese, who would seek his advice and help.

Metropolitan Anthony received honorary distinctions from Aberdeen University (”for preaching  the Word of God and renewing the spiritual life of the country”); from the Moscow Theological  Academy and Seminar, for his theological, pastoral and preaching work; from Cambridge University and the Theological Academy in Kiev. His first works on prayer and spiritual life (Living Prayer, Meditations on a Theme, and God and Man) were initially published in England, and subsequently translated and published either in a volume or as articles, becoming well known in several countries, among which Russia and in Romania.

Metropolitan Anthony passed away on the 4^th of August 2003. He was buried in Brompton cemetery in London. Many Orthodox Christians from Great Britain and the entire world consider Metropolitan Anthony a contemporary saint.