From 13th century to 1686, Orthodox Christians who lived in Lithuania saw Constantinople as their Mother church, from where Orthodoxy came to the country.
That’s according to Seimas Speaker Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, LRT reports.
“It was part of the Metropolis of Kyiv that was subordinate to the Ecumenical Patriarch. And only later, as Russia’s power expanded and grew, did it become subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate,” she said.
The war in Ukraine also showed that, in addition to economic and political unity, spiritual unity is equally important, says Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
“As you all know, after the end of the Cold War, all the walls came down. Borders have disappeared, the movement of people and goods has accelerated,” the patriarch said during the conference.
“This union was purely material, dominated by technological and economic factors. At the same time, universal and global problems emerged, and they intensified: the climate crisis, financial crisis, health crisis during the pandemic, and energy crisis. All these became global challenges that required global action,” said His Holiness.
He expressed regret that efforts to achieve unity in solving these problems were interrupted by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Instead of striving for global unity and actions at the global level, unfortunately, due to Russia’s aggression, everything in Ukraine has come to a standstill,” Patriarch Bartholomew said. “Finally, it became obvious that in addition to political and economic unity, spiritual unity is also very important, but in this area, instead of achieving progress, we unfortunately felt constant regression.”
According to the patriarch, recent decades have shown that hopes for economic globalization uniting people on a cultural and spiritual basis and leading to world peace have not been fulfilled.
