KRIVOCHEINE, BASIL (VSEVOLOD)

KRIVOCHEINE, BASIL (VSEVOLOD), Archbishop of Brussels and Belgium (30 July 1900–22 September 1985). Son of a distinguished statesman, Vsevolod studied history and philology at the universities of Petrograd and Moscow, completed his higher studies in Paris, where he was awarded the licence es lettres degree from the Sorbonne in 1921, and became a student at the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute (q.v.) in 1925. He departed to become a monk in St. Panteleimon Monastery on Mt. Athos (q.v.), taking the name Basil, and remaining there for twenty-two years, spending much of his time pursuing patristic (q.v.) studies. Having become proficient in Greek, he was for some time the monastery’s Greek correspondence secretary. In 1937 he became a member of the monastery’s monastic council, and from 1942 to 1945 he represented the monastery at the sessions of the Holy Community in Karyes.

Due to collaborationist charges from World War II, he was condemned by a Greek court, expelled from Athos, and confined in a camp on Makronisos. In 1951, following his release, he went to England to work on the Patristic Greek Lexicon at Oxford University. At Oxford on 21–22 May 1951, he was ordained deacon and assistant priest of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Annunciation (Moscow Patriarchate). On 14 June 1959 in London he was consecrated titular Bishop of Volokolamsk and auxiliary to the Moscow Patriarchal Exarchate of Western Europe. On 31 May 1960 he was nominated Bishop of Brussels and Belgium, and became archbishop on 21 July. He has represented the Moscow Patriarchate in pan-Orthodox discussions at Rhodes (1961, 1963, 1964), Belgrade (1966), and Chambesy (1968). He is author of In the Light of Christ: Saint Symeon, the New Theologian (Eng. trans., 1986).