FACTBOX: Russia Church contenders for Orthodox patriarch

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The most likely contenders to succeed Alexiy II as Patriarch are three senior figures, or metropolitans, within the Russian Orthodox Church, according to church sources and local media.

A Church representative told Reuters that the most likely candidates were Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and (Metropolitan) Klement of Kaluga and Borovsk.

A third possibly compromise candidate would be Metropolitan Juvenali of Krutitsy and Kolomna, who may also lead the Russian Orthodox Church until the election of a new patriarch.

Following are brief descriptions of the three:

METROPOLITAN KIRILL: Kirill heads the Church's department for external relations, the same role filled by Alexiy II before he became Patriarch.

An articulate public speaker, Kirill is often perceived as the public face of the Church to many Russians, with frequent public appearances on television programs.

Kirill was born in St Petersburg into a priest's family and was ordained a priest in 1969, becoming a theology lecturer two years later, Interfax news agency reported.

METROPOLITAN KLEMENT: Klement is a prominent figure within the hierarchy and manages the Church's economic affairs, though compared with Kirill, he is considered to be closer to the government, said a church source.

Aged 59, Klement was born in the Moscow region and enrolled in a Moscow seminary in 1970. He completed his studies only in 1974 after serving two years in the Soviet army, according to his biography on the www.patriarhia.ru website.

Apart from ministering in the United States and Canada in the 1980s, the website reports he held a succession of prominent positions in the Church in the 1990s.

He held senior Church positions and in 2006 was appointed to a state role, to chair a committee of the Russian Federation's Public Chamber responsible for the country's spiritual and cultural heritage.

METROPOLITAN JUVENALI: Metropolitan Juvenali, who has been linked in the early 90s with Church reformers, has also been mentioned in the Russian media as a possible successor.

Juvenali is more than a decade older than either Klement or Kirill. He was born in Yaroslavl in 1935 and enrolled in a seminary in 1953, the same year Stalin died.

In 1964, Juvenali led the first Orthodox Church delegation to visit Jerusalem since the 1917 revolution, according to the Church website www.patriarhia.ru. For more than 30 years, Juvenali has been a member of the Church's synod.

(Writing by Conor Sweeney; Reporting by Alexander Gelogaev and Conor Sweeney; Editing by Richard Balmforth)