MOSCOW : Alexy II, the conservative Orthodox patriarch who oversaw a post-Soviet renaissance of the Russian Church yet was steadily criticised as subservient to the Kremlin, died on Friday, the church said.

Alexy, 79, died at his secluded residence outside Moscow. No cause of death was announced officially, but state news agency RIA Novosti, quoting church sources it did not name, said he had died of a heart attack.

An emergency church synod was to convene in Moscow on Saturday to make arrangements for a funeral, expected to take place as early as Sunday, and begin deliberations on a successor.

Under church tradition, the synod has up to six months to select a new patriarch.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was the first senior political figure to comment on news of Alexy II's death, calling it a "great loss" for the country.

Shortly afterwards, President Dmitry Medvedev issued a statement in New Delhi, where he was on an official visit, calling the death a "great sorrow" for Russia.

A spokeswoman said Medvedev was postponing a planned visit to Italy this weekend and would return directly to Moscow.

In Vatican City, the Roman Catholic Church whose relations with Russian orthodoxy have long been wary, voiced sadness at news of Alexy II's death.

"It fell upon Patriarch Alexy II to guide the church in a period of great transformation," a spokesman said. "He took on this task with a great sense of responsibility and love of Russian tradition."

Despite leading the Russian church during a period of robust revival, Alexy II was regarded by many as essentially an establishment figure and was criticised by some as being too ready to serve the Kremlin's political causes.

Born Alexei Ridiger, he made his ecclesiastical career at a time when the church was controlled by Soviet authorities before forging an alliance with the new Russian state under presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.

The patriarch was an impressive character with a benign expression and moral authority among millions of Russian believers but his personality was always locked in by the deeply hierarchical nature of his role.

Alexy II took stances on foreign policy issues that often matched the Kremlin line, criticising NATO strikes against Yugoslavia, the US-led war in Iraq and defending the rights of ethnic-Russians in the former Soviet Union.

But his role in the international arena was marked above all by wariness of Roman Catholics, whom he accused of "proselytism," and he refused repeatedly to meet Pope John Paul II and his successor Benedict XVI.

The main reason for the row was a property dispute between the Catholic and Orthodox churches in Ukraine, where the Greek Catholic church, which was banned by Stalin and dispossessed, took back hundreds of parishes from the Orthodox church at the beginning of the 1990s.

The creation of four Catholic dioceses in Russia also created suspicion among Orthodox leaders. Several rounds of negotiations between Catholic and Orthodox officials failed to smooth differences.

He was also, however, a unifying Orthodox figure who helped engineer a union with a branch of the Russian Orthodox church that separated from Moscow-based church authorities after the 1917 Soviet revolution.

Ridiger was born on February 23, 1929 in then independent Estonia, the son of an Orthodox priest. He worked in two cathedrals after Estonia became part of the Soviet Union and entered a religious seminary under Stalin.

He married but then divorced in order to become a monk in 1961 during the anti-religion campaigns launched by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. He was soon promoted to bishop.

Ridiger had a successful career under Leonid Brezhnev at a time when the Orthodox church was effectively controlled by the KGB and dissident priests were thrown into jail.

The future patriarch conformed and rose rapidly through church ranks, becoming number two in the influential external affairs section of the patriarchate.

Despite his ties with the Communist establishment, he made some efforts to curb Soviet repression, including keeping open a famous convent in Estonia that was threatened with closure.

He became patriarch in 1990, shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union.

At the time, Alexy was seen as more in touch with the reforms to the Soviet system being undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev than another candidate, metropolitan Filaret, considered even closer to the Communist regime.

The new patriarch remained prudent after the fall of the Communist system, ruling out investigations against church officials accused of links to the Soviet secret services.

In close collaboration with Yeltsin and Putin, Alexy II used his close relations with the authorities to rebuild the influence of the Orthodox church.

Seminaries were restored, churches rebuilt and church finances greatly boosted by income from customs duties granted by the Russian government during the 1990s.

The lavish Christ the Saviour cathedral in central Moscow, which was destroyed under Stalin and replaced by an open-air swimming pool, was rebuilt in full splendour during Alexy II's patriarchate.

Religion gained influence in schools, prisons, hospitals and the armed services. - AFP/ms