Moscow  - The Russian Orthodox Church began voting to elect a new leader Tuesday, the first church election since the collapse of the officially atheist communist regime in 1991.

A full church council of over 700 bishops, monks and laypeople from the former Soviet Union gathered in Moscow's massive Christ the Saviour Cathedral to choose a successor to Alexei II, who died last month.

Clergy clad in ceremonial garb intoned a liturgy that resonated against the gilded vaults of the cathedral, opening the proceedings with prayer. The new patriarch is to be enthroned Sunday.

The interim church leader, Metropolitan Kirill, who is seen as the favourite, won over 60 per cent of the first round of voting in a secret ballot by church leaders to select candidates on Sunday.

His ascension seemed all but guaranteed after one of the three short-listed candidates, Belarus-based Metropolitan Filaret, withdrew to back Kirill shortly before the vote Tuesday.

The election comes at the peak of the Orthodox Church's popularity.

Alexei II presided over the sweeping revival of the church in the nearly two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, he was criticized by some for allowing the church to fall too much under the Kremlin's sway.

As the church's top diplomat, the 62-year-old Kirill fills the same post held by Alexei II before he became patriarch in 1990 and is widely recognized as the public face of the church.

The church external relations department enjoyed relative autonomy in Soviet times, but many senior clergy in the branch have since been accused of collaborating with the KGB.

Many hope Kirill's liberal stance will allow for a rapprochement with the Vatican, which split with the Orthodox Church almost 1,000 years ago. In December 2007, Kirill held a sensitive meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in Rome and voiced optimism that relations may improve.

Experts say Kirill has worked hard in the past month to win the support of more conservative strains of the church and change perceptions that he is more of a politician than a spiritual leader.

But church traditionalists have rallied around Kirill's closest rival, Metropolitan Kliment, 59, the powerful head of the church's administration at its Moscow headquarters.

In 2006, Kliment was appointed by then-president Vladimir Putin to a government seat, to chair a committee on Russia's spiritual and cultural heritage. Experts took it as a signal of the Kremlin's favour.

Church and state are separate under Russia's constitution, but the Orthodox Church has a long history of subjugation to the state in Russia.

The Kremlin may be wary of Kirill's independence at the head of the Orthodox Church, which counts more than 100 million faithful in Russia, they said. (dpa)