The birth of a church diplomat: the first foreign missions of bishop Pitirim (Nechaev) in the late 1950s - 1960s

On the basis of the unique sources from the personal archive of Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokolamsk and Yuriev (Nechaev, 1926 - 2003), the article examines the history of his formation as a church diplomat. The circumstances and facts of a private biography that influenced the forming of the personality of the future hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, which took place during one of the turning epochs in the modern history of Orthodoxy, are reconstructed. The “Stalinist turn” in religious policy in 1943 had a direct impact on K.V. Nechaev’s life having identified the possibilities of obtaining a confessional education and joining the priestly and hierarchical ministry. His proximity to Patriarch Alexy (Simansky), social circle and professionalization at the Moscow Theological Academy predetermined Konstantin’s vocation to the key public ministry of the church of that time - the diplomatic one. At the same time, for Vladyka Pitirim, this ministry was not a direct official mission, but a component of his main activity as a long-term editor of the key church publication, the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate and chairman of the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate. The formation of Vladyka and his first foreign missions, carried out in the late 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, are considered as a logical continuation of his successful work of the reception of foreign delegations in the Soviet Union. The reconstruction of the initial stage of the church-diplomatic ministry of Vladyka Pitirim (Nechaev) in the context of intra-church processes and “big history” events allows us to expand our understanding of the epoch and the specificity of hierarchical ministry.