Metropolitan Vladimir was head of the church in southern Russia until his election Wednesday by the main church authorities in Moscow.
He was born in 1929 and was graduated from the St. Petersburg seminary and served in the Pskov region in northwestern Russia before moving to Rostov, about 1,000 kilometers south of Moscow.
Metropolitan Vladimir replaces Metropolitan Ioann, a leader of church hardliners, who died of a heart attack in October.
Metropolitan Ioann preached that Orthodoxy should be the only religion in Russia, and he harshly condemned the many Western and Eastern missionary groups that have flooded Russia since the Soviet collapse.
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