L’Église orthodoxe russe

At the end of 2012, the Russian Orthodox Church comprised 247 dioceses, 290 bishops (including archbishops and metropolitan bishops) and 33,489 parishes. The clergy numbered 34,195, consisting of 30,430 priests and 3,765 deacons.

(Source : Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, 2-5 February 2013. Note : these figures represent the total for the Russian Orthodox Church, which includes Ukraine, Belarus and other countries. Figures for Russia alone are not available.)

According to data from the Ministry of Justice of 1 January 2017, from among 17,687 religious organisations (14,277 in 2012) of the Russian Orthodox Church registered in Russia alone, there are 189 main religious organisations (eparchies or dioceses), 16,497 local religious organisations (parishes), 57 institutions for professional religious teaching (academies and seminaries), 469 monasteries and 275 religious establishments (governing or coordinating bodies).

In accordance with the theological principles of the Russian Orthodox Church, each person baptised is regarded as a member of the church (the majority of those baptised are infants and small children). It can be said that the proportion of Orthodox faithful represents about 80% of the population. According to data from the Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion, in 2010 75% of those interviewed claimed to be Orthodox. However, a significant number of these Orthodox do not themselves say that they are members of the Church. According to a survey by the SREDA Research Centre in 2012, only 41% of the Russian population claim to belong to the Russian Orthodox Church and, from among them, one-third (34%) say they practise regularly (i.e. 14% of the total population of Russia).