Joseph Stalin to be canonized?

I think most of it comes from the fact that most Westerners are unable to connect with the holocaust in Russia, whereas the Nazi regime is far, far closer to home. Hence why more emphasis is place upon the German holocaust and why less people seem to mention the atrocities of the Soviet in places like the US. Of course, this is just a vague theory... Anyhow, this video really does not seem at all real to me. Is there any other documentation regarding this incident besides these two videos? The first link seemed more like an attempt to show why religion was stupid.

I don\'t know, there are plenty icon-like images (statues and otherwise) of almost divine-looking figures from the Communist era. The communists seem to have taken care of it already.

Wow. I never knew that. Even a death-bed repentance, though, is hardly saint-worthy.

Yeah. I don\'t think there\'s any evidence for repentance from Stalin. And his repentance, given the magnitude of the crime, would have required a bit more. My own opinion, from the little I know of empirical evidence, is that he had real mental problems.

It\'s not for us to judge. I just got back from Greece and one of the places I visited was the church of St Dionysios on the island of Zakynthos. On the back wall of the church there is a huge, ceiling-to-floor icon of the last judgment. In this particular Icon, the iconographer included people in business suits, and people in \\"foustonellas\\" (I think that\'s what they\'re called - the stuff that soldiers wore during the Greek revolution), representative of the average guy. He even put himself in the Icon, with his easel and everything, in a white painting-coat (In my opinion...symbolic of all iconographers...). Then there was one thing that I initially thought was really cool, but after talking to a friend...I didn\'t agree with...the iconographer had depicted Hitler (the only was you could tell was his moustache...he was naked) with the damned being herded by the demons into hell. My friend brought up the good point...It\'s not for us to judge. Obviously we can\'t canonize/glorify Hitler or Stalin. But it\'s not for us to make the judgment on them (Judge not lest ye be judged)...who knows...maybe they DID repent inwardly and ended up going to heaven. We can\'t canonize them, but we can\'t \\"anti-canonize\\" them either, and making icons without halos or whatever, that would be like that. It would be saying \\"These people are in hell\\" when we don\'t know that. As one contemporary elder said, we should not be able to stand the fact that some souls are cut off from God, and we should pray with all our hearts for their salvation. Just my two cents. -Manoli P.S. They wouldn\'t let us take pix in the church on Zakynthos and nobody sold copies of that Icon, but if somebody wants to try and find it online, go right ahead.

I watched the first one...give me a break...Jesus didn\'t rise from the dead? Then what about the Holy Fire? OH, and the second one has been removed due to terms of something or other...

I think that\'s a misunderstanding of what an anti-pope was. If I remember my middle school history correctly, an anti-pope was a pretender to the papal seat who was not officially recognised by the Roman church.

I recently watched a documentary about neo-nazi gangs in Russia. It\'s in the series \\"Ross Kemp on Gangs\\" and it\'s the episode \\"Russia\\" or \\"Moscow\\", if I recall correctly. I found it through Veoh TV on the internet. It\'s a bit of an eye-opener on just how crazy some of these groups are, and it strikes me that some of this stuff like the attempts to canonize Ivan the Terrible and Stalin can come from some of this weird reactionary philosophy. Has anyone else seen this documentary? Any thoughts?

Who knows? I haven\'t seen the documentary, but a lot of weird stuff like what you described probably has something to do with it. People are stupid. That\'s why I\'m glad I\'m not a people.

Some of my best friends happen to be people. But I never hold it against them.

Antipope is also a term used by st Athanasius of Paros,to describe st.Marcus of Ephesus who denied to sign the of Ferrar\'s pseudosynod . He has written a book with this title \\"Antipope\\". There is freely in the web. For those who speak greek pm me to receive the link.

I don\'t think Stalin will be canonized. While it\'s true that Stalin had many churches built during WWII it seems that he had them built more in an attempt to get the population behind him during the war than building them to glorify Christ. He arguably may have actually destroyed more churches(not to mention the mass murders of millions of Orthodox laypeople and clergy)then he built. He certainly, as far as most historians can tell, never showed the slightest bit of contrition for his misdeeds and murderous ways. Which sets him apart from people like St. Paul and others.

Didn\'t he have millions of Orthodox people killed? Didn\'t he hate the Orthodox Church? Didn\'t he die an Atheist? Just the thought of people wanting him to be a saint is \\"embarrasing\\". JNORM888

I hope and pray this is the case.

There is some question on whether or not he actually DID die an athiest, but for the most part, yes, you\'re right. This is probably just some communist propaganda thing that\'ll die down an a year or so. I wouldn\'t sweat it, since no bishop is going to take it seriously.