Russian Patriarch Kirill’s full-throated blessing for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has splintered the worldwide Orthodox Church and unleashed an internal rebellion that experts say is unprecedented.
The patriarch has sparked a backlash at home as well as among Churches abroad linked to the Moscow Patriarchate, Reuters reports.
In Russia, nearly 300 Orthodox members of a group called Russian Priests for Peace signed a letter condemning the “murderous orders” carried out in Ukraine.
Of 260 million Orthodox Christians in the world, about 100 million are in Russia itself and some of those abroad are in unity with Moscow. But the war has strained those relations.
In Amsterdam, the war convinced priests at St. Nicholas Orthodox parish to stop commemorating Kirill in services. Russian bishop in Western Europe visited to try to change their minds but the parish severed ties with the Moscow Patriarchate, calling the decision a “very difficult step (taken) with pain in our hearts”.
“Kirill has simply discredited the Church,” said Rev. Taras Khomych, a senior lecturer in theology at Liverpool Hope University and member of Ukraine’s Byzantine-rite Catholic Church. “More people want to speak out in Russia but are afraid,” he told Reuters in telephone interview.
Ukraine has about 30 million Orthodox believers, divided between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) and two other Orthodox Churches, one of which is the autocephalous, or independent, Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Ukraine is of visceral significance to the Russian Orthodox Church because it is seen as the cradle of the Rus’ civilisation, a medieval entity where in the 10th century Byzantine Orthodox missionaries converted the pagan Prince Volodymyr.
Kyiv Metropolitan (Archbishop) Onufry Berezovsky of the UOC-MP appealed to Putin for “an immediate end to the fratricidal war”, and another UOC-MP Metropolitan, Evology, from the eastern city of Sumy, told his priests to stop praying for Kirill.
“Some Churches are so angry with Kirill over his position on war that we are facing an upheaval in world Orthodoxy,” Tamara Grdzelidze, professor of Religious Studies at Ilia State University in Georgia and a former Georgian ambassador to the Vatican, told Reuters.
In a joint statement, Orthodox theologians from institutions including the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University in New York and the Volos Academy for Theological Studies in Greece condemned those Church leaders “directing their communities to pray in ways that actively encourage hostility”.
Other Orthodox leaders who have criticised the war include Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria and all Africa, Patriarch Daniel of Romania and Archbishop Leo of Finland.
