Religion in Russia is big business.

These days, the Russian Orthodox Church is selling more than candles and orthodox literature. Administrative branches of the church have been in on oil-export and tobacco-import deals worth millions of dollars. Never known for shying away from making money to stay solvent, the Orthodox Church factory continues to produce and sell icons and candles; bishops bless automobiles in exchange for money; and one diocese has entered into a high-profile, bottled water venture with private partners. But all of this is small potatoes when compared to the church's overall business interests. It is founding banks, importing duty-free cigarettes in a program that has cost the Russian government at least $40 million in forfeited revenues, and it is a partner in an oil-exporting business that has an expected turnover of $2 billion per year.

At Moscow's Danilovsky Monastery, the seat of Alexy II, the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, officials have made no attempt to deny their participation in the smaller and more traditional commercial activities. But the big business being conducted by various departments of the church is more complicated. There is no mention of these commercial structures -- neither the banks nor the tobacco-import and oil-export companies -- in the patriarchate's official balance sheet. Highly placed church representatives also deny the existence of these activities. Other market participants, however, including those doing business with the church, speak of their connections openly.

As a noncommercial organization, the Orthodox Church is bound by Russian federal law to make its budgetary information public -- something it hasn't done since 1995. Responding to a request to examine the records, the Moscow patriarchate's chief accountant, Natalya Deryuzhkina, said Alexy "will publish information about his budget when he deems it necessary, through his own means of mass information."

Critics of the patriarchate say that the church is also involved in other high-revenue forms of business. Alexander Nezhny, who has written a number of exposes, suspects that the patriarchate has a finger in the diamond-mining industry. Other churches also have business dealings. Most Protestant churches have no canonical limitations regarding profit-making as a whole, and any prohibitions generally concern illegal activities. One expert on the financial affairs of the Roman Catholic Church said, "The Vatican's largest commercial project is securities investments, including bonds, which total nearly $500 million. Earlier, information concerning the Vatican's finances was carefully concealed. However, recently, this policy has been changed and twice a year the head of the budgetary department gives a press conference, where he details the [church's] state of affairs."

The primary secular concern that's been voiced about religious business activities in Russia (activities which depend on favors from the government) is that the finances are not openly declared. As a result, the full extent of this commerce is unknown, allowing it to grow too great and to compromise the interests of the Russian government.