(RNS) — Bishop Shio Mujiri will now be known as Patriarch Shio III, leading the Georgian Orthodox Church, one of the most prominent institutions in the country. He was enthroned in the 1,000-year-old Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, an ancient capital north of modern Tbilisi, on Tuesday morning (May 12), taking over one of Eastern Orthodoxy’s oldest churches after the death of one of its longest-serving leaders. 

On Monday, Shio received 22 out of 39 votes from the Synod of the Georgian Orthodox Church in Tbilisi’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, outpacing the two other hierarchs who had been shortlisted for the role after Patriarch Ilia II died in March. Shio will step into the shoes of a giant as Georgia faces one of the most politically tumultuous periods in its recent history. 

The Georgian Orthodox Church is one of the oldest Christian church bodies in the world, stretching back to the Apostle Andrew by tradition and by documentation at least as far back as the fifth century. 

Shio, 57, who was born Elizbar Mujiri, became the 142nd leader of the church since it was first granted autocephaly — meaning self-headed in Greek — under the Byzantines in 480 A.D. 

The church remains influential in Georgian society. A 2002 constitutional agreement gave the church special privileges far beyond the simple freedom of worship accorded to other religions in Georgia. 

“The Church has always been an unshakable pillar of Georgian statehood and spiritual strength,” Georgian Prime Minister Irakly Kobakhidze said in a statement congratulating Shio on his election. “It is the Orthodox faith that has preserved for us those eternal values, thanks to which our country has reached this day.

“I believe that your pastorate will serve the peaceful, united, and strong future of our country. May the Lord protect our country and its new spiritual father,” he added. 

Kobakhidze wasn’t just being diplomatic. A 2020 poll by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that nearly 80% of Georgians agreed that the Georgian Orthodox Church is the foundation of their identity. And 50% agreed that Georgian citizens should be Georgian Orthodox — despite the country’s 10% Muslim minority, and long-standing Jewish, Yazidi and non-Georgian Orthodox Christian communities. 

“It’s really the textbook example of a national church being the cornerstone of national identity,” Samuel Noble, a scholar of Orthodox Christianity at Belgium’s University of Liège, told RNS. “If you look up any polls done in Georgia, always the most trusted institution is the church, the most trusted individual was Patriarch Ilia.”

Ilia II served in the patriarch role for nearly 50 years. Enthroned in 1977, he is remembered by many as a source of continuity and stability in Georgia.

Under Soviet rule, even when the church was deeply infiltrated by the KGB, he earned respect for sheltering anticommunist Georgian activists. And when the Iron Curtain crashed down, he shepherded the church through the emergence of an independent Georgia, defending its canonical independence, defining its cultural identity and building ties with different political factions in and out of Georgia. 

“His first two decades were probably the most difficult period for him with how the churches were organized and controlled under the Soviet regime,” Vladimer Narsia, a scholar of Orthodox Christian theology and head of the Canon Law Centre at Tbilisi’s Ilia State University, told RNS. “In the second part of his leadership, after the independence of Georgia, the church gained power and he went through these more than 25 years as a main player not just in the religious life of the nation, but in the political life as well.”

In a country where the median age is 37, Ilia was the only leader many Orthodox Christians knew for their church. 

“There’s not really anybody comparable,” Noble said, adding that Ilia was responsible for a “great deal” of cultural rebuilding postcommunism.  “ … Under Ilia, it wasn’t just that there was a new freedom for the church, but there was also a reassertion of the Georgianness of the church. … Traditional Georgian church music was revived, traditional Georgian liturgical practice, emphasis on Georgian rather than common Russian saints all came back, and the church was rebuilt in an incredible way.”

But Ilia’s tenure wasn’t without controversy. In 2017, a Georgian Orthodox priest was arrested in Berlin with cyanide in his baggage, allegedly planning on assassinating Ilia’s own secretary over an internal dispute. 

In 2021, a leak exposed that Georgia’s state security services had been spying on church leaders, allegedly recording illegal activity for potential blackmail. 

The church under Ilia also faced criticism for its reactions to LGBTQ+ activism in Georgia. In 2013, a group of clergymen led thousands to counter a small antihomophobia protest in Tbilisi — an encounter that ultimately devolved into a riot, with activists and journalists assaulted. Days earlier, Ilia had called homosexuality a disease and called for banning LGBTQ+ activists from Tbilisi.

Though Shio doesn’t have the long-standing cultural cachet of Ilia, nine years ago Shio was appointed by Ilia to oversee the leadership transition after the patriarch’s eventual passing. Over the years, Shio had already taken over many of Ilia’s duties as his health deteriorated. 

Shio isn’t expected to differ from Ilia much on social issues, but he is taking the helm in the midst of a second year of a protracted political crisis in Georgia, and many are watching to see how he navigates the church’s position. Nearly two years since disputed 2024 elections, Tbilisi is still wracked by protests against the ruling Georgian Dream party, which has responded with authoritarian crackdowns and legislation. 

“What happened in 2024 was the most important mark in the recent history of the Georgian nation,” Narsia said. By that point, he noted, Ilia had stepped back from politics due to his health, but the church had been an active participant in earlier years. The same year, in an attempt to court church support, Georgian Dream floated the idea of enshrining the Orthodox church in law as Georgia’s state religion, but Shio and Ilia shot down the idea. 

Shio’s ascension to the patriarchal throne comes amid another great divide. For years, the Orthodox world has been defined by a major rift between Moscow, seat of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the world’s largest Orthodox church, and Constantinople, seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, a historical leader of Orthodox Christendom. 

In 2018, the Russian church broke ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the latter’s establishment of a Ukrainian Church independent from the Russian church. It created the largest schism in Orthodoxy since the break with Rome in 1054. 

In the weeks between Ilia’s death and Shio’s election, both Moscow and Constantinople accused the other of interference in the succession process. Ties with Moscow have also suffered ever since Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, and the Russian church has often been criticized for giving spiritual justification to the war in Ukraine and the Putin regime.

Shio, who completed much of his religious education in Moscow in Russian Orthodox institutions, has many concerned over those ties. 

“One of the great challenges that the Georgian Orthodox Church has today will be how the new patriarch reads the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church over the Georgian church,” Narsia said.