Vincent Victor Berg (born Viktor Vladimirovich Chekalin, , also known as bishop Vikenty Chekalin, ; February 19, 1952, Tula) is a Soviet religious figure, known mainly for the fact that in 1990, together with Bishop John (Bodnarchuk), he was involved in reestablishing the hierarchy of the revived UAOC. Also in 1990, he established the Russian Orthodox Catholic Church.
His activities caused and continue to cause a sharply hostile reaction from the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian authorities. In his interview in December 2022, Berg warns that he has been and continues to be subjected to targeted discredit and slander using falsifications and disinformation.
Since 1992, he has been living in Australia, having retired from public religious activities.
Early life Chekalin was born on February 19, 1952, in Tula. According to the Izvestia, "Viktor Chekalin, along with his mother, was abandoned early by his father, a prominent party and economic regional worker. The son was the main support in the family". In 1969, he graduated from high school.
In a 2022 interview, Vincent Berg claimed that before completing high school, a high-ranking KGB officer offered him two options to become a political intelligence officer: studying at the Moscow Institute of International Relations to obtain a diplomatic cover or undergoing specialized medical training to work as a psychiatrist in international organizations like the World Health Organization. He chose the latter, citing his family's governmental positions and his academic and athletic achievements as factors in his selection.
In 1974 he graduated from the Tula Polytechnic Institute (now Tula State University). In 1978, according to his 1989 autobiography, he received a degree in sociology, worked in "state institutions", since 1980 he was a member of the Soviet Sociological Association, which united sociologists, as well as instructors in the ideological work of the CPSU and Komsomol. According to his 1982 autobiography however, after graduating from the institute, he received a diploma not as a sociologist, but as an engineer, and before switching to church service he worked as a "leading engineer of the Head Specialized Design and Technology Bureau of automated control systems". According to his 2022 interview, "After completion of special and medical training, I was working as an instructor in the same special school until my departure to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1981." According to the same interview, "as a result of my professional study of the human psyche and a search for personal meaning of life, I found God and turned towards religion. My supervisors discovered this and decided that I became professionally compromised. I was unable to continue working as required. After a certain struggle, they allowed me to start serving in the Church as I wanted. They hoped to use me as a clergyman for their purposes."
Ministry for the Russian Orthodox Church In February 1981, he left the civil job and started serving in the Church as the reader and singer of the left choir of the Church of the Savior in Tula, then storekeeper, manager and clerk of the Tula diocesan administration. In April 1982, bishop of Tula and Belyov ordained him a deacon, and Chekalin became a cleric of the Diocese of Tula. He was appointed a cleric of the Assumption Church of the town of Aleksin, but here, referring to a sore throat, he constantly missed services without blessing and valid reasons. On December 20, 1982, Chekalin wrote a petition to the ruling bishop to release him from service at the church in the town of Aleksin, after which, by decree No. 36 of February 17, 1983, Bishop German (Timofeyev) of Tula released him from the aforementioned position and appointed him a watchman of the Tula diocesan administration. Already on May 2, 1983, Chekalin wrote that he had fully recovered and asked to be sent back to serve as a deacon in one of the churches of the Diocese of Tula. On the basis of this petition, by Decree No. 150 of June 15, 1983, he was appointed full-time deacon of the Theotokos-Nativity Church of the town of Belyov. However, soon after that, on June 17, 1983, Bishop German (Timofeyev) of Tula issued a document to Viktor Chekalin with the following content: "In view of your disagreement to accept the appointment to serve as a deacon in the Nativity of Theotokos Church of the town of Belyov, since you have returned my decree to me, I do not mind if you find yourself a feasible job at your discretion and your capabilities". On August 29, 1983, by decree of Bishop German No. 254 Chekalin was "dismissed for staff according to the petition".
On August 31 of the same year, Bishop German (Timofeyev) received a letter from the Patriarch Pimen of Moscow and All Russia, according to which he had to give Chekalin a letter of leave and hand over his personal file "to place him in the Diocese of Moscow." At the same time, with the blessing of Patriarch Pimen, Chekalin was enrolled to the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. This monastery was transferred to the ROC that year by the Government of the Soviet Union "to create in it and on the adjacent site the Administrative Center of the Moscow Patriarchate" and the residence of the Moscow Patriarchs. According to Chekalin's own testimony, being a celibate deacon, he carried the obedience of a cellarer in the monastery being restored, "was responsible for supplying the brethren", as well as "for ensuring the construction of the monastery with everything necessary." However, researcher Serhii Shumylo calls these testimonies exaggerated, referring to the absence in the Chekalin's personal file the data on such significant obediences.
However, the well-known associations of Serhii Shumylo with the Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP), and the very evidence of access to Chekalin's personal file in the Moscow Patriarchate allow us to doubt the independence and impartiality of Serhii Shumylo as a researcher of this topic and the complete reliability of his relevant statements, including those in this publication. They require an independent verification and confirmation. This is what he further states.
In the Danilov Monastery, Chekalin was denied monastic tonsure, and he did not stay long in it. In a letter to the namestnik of the monastery, Archimandrite Eulogius (Smirnov), referring to a sore throat, he wrote that he could not serve in autumn, winter and spring, and could only serve in summer. Therefore, he is going to "submit a petition to Mount Athos: I believe that the grace of the Holy Mountain and its beneficial climate for me will bring me spiritual and physical healing"
In May 1984, he was expelled from the monastery and sent back to the Diocese of Tula. As Eulogius (Smirnov) later recalled when he was Archbishop of Vladimir and Suzdal, "apparently, he was still looking not for monasticism, but for a good position and the opportunity to live in a monastery on a grand scale. Later I was told that the deacon, after returning to Tula, for a long time posed as a "Danilovets", pursuing personal goals".
On 28 June 1986 Vikenti (Chekalin) was consecrated as a bishop of one of the Russian Catacomb churches. In his consecration participated at least two bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church (Metropolitan of Kalinin and Kashyn, Alexiy (Konoplev) and Bishop of Zhitomir and Ovruch, Ioann (Bodnarchuk)) and Bishop of the Zelenchuk Catacomb Church Vladimir (Abramov). In August 1986 Vikenti (Chekalin) was arrested by the KGB agents and he claimed that they took away his original bishophood certificate signed by all three bishops.
Criminal case, marriage and defrocking In March 1986, Chekalin started working as a teacher of labor and mathematics at an eight-year school in the village of Yagodnoye, Kaluga Oblast. However, here, according to the parents of schoolchildren, in September 1986 he was arrested on charges of molesting minors. While awaiting sentencing, he spent six months in a Kaluga prison. During the investigation, he was subjected to psychiatric examination, after which, on February 26, 1987, by the verdict of the People's Court of Ulyanovsky District, Kaluga Oblast, he was found guilty and sentenced under article 120 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR ("depraved acts against minors") to 3.5 years of forced correctional labor in the Kaluga Region. During the arrest, a search was carried out in his apartment, during which "tape cassettes, notebooks, books, etc." were seized. However, the question arises as to how the seizure of such items corresponds to the nature of the charges brought against him. As Chekalin later claimed, "for the sake of saving my life ... I yielded to the pressure on me and later, at the investigation and at a closed court hearing in February 1987, I admitted my falsified guilt in the corruption of minors. I was sentenced to three years of forced labor at the construction sites of the national economy. During my time in the special commissariat, I did not consider it possible to appeal the verdict." Chekalin explained his recognition of the charges by saying that the investigation "suggested that I either admit the charge proposed to me and be sentenced on probation, or be convicted of financial violations at Danilov Monastery, whose cellarer I was in 1983–1984, and receive 7 years in a penal colony".
He served his sentence in the special commissariat of the Oktyabrsky Department of Internal Affairs of the city of Kaluga from August 1986 to December 1987, worked not in the city construction sites, as Serhii Shumylo claims, but as a leading engineer of a computer center. At the same time, according to Chekalin, on May 16, 1987, "while on forced labor," he "formally registered a marriage with Levina Lyubov Ivanovna, dying of liver cancer, at her request, in order to adopt her son. There was no other way for adoption then, since I was accused of corrupting children." A month later, on June 11, 1987, Levina died. In December 1987, he was released early for good behavior, since the article under which he was convicted fell under amnesty. He returned to Tula. The fact of his early release gave rise to rumors that he was recruited by the KGB in prison. A certificate kept in the archives of Holy Trinity Theological Seminary in Jordanville, New York, states that after his early release, Chekalin got a job at the publishing house of the Seventh-day Adventist' Seminary, located in the urban-type settlement of Zaoksky, Tula Oblast.
On May 15, 1988, by a resolution of Patriarch Pimen, he was deprived of the diaconate on the basis of the 26th Apostolic canon (marriage after the priesthood ordination), about which Chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchy Metropolitan Vladimir (Sabodan) of Rostov and Novocherkassk, notified Archbishop Maxim (Krokha) of Tula and Belyov by letter dated May 26, 1988. As Serhii Shumylo noted: "both the criminal punishment of Chekalin and the deprivation of his deaconry did not have the character of repression for any 'oppositional beliefs' or 'dissent', which were not observed for him. They were purely moral and criminal in nature, and there was no talk about his alleged 'secret bishopric' or involvement in the 'Catacomb Church' at that time".
Falsification of tonsure, priestly and episcopal ordination