The Russian Orthodox Church, Complicit in War

"We have to create conditions where no actors dependent on the aggressor state [Russia] will have an opportunity to manipulate Ukrainians and weaken Ukraine from within."

"We will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul."

"[Government officials are ordered to] ensure the religious examination of the Management Statute of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for the presence of a church-canonical connection with the Moscow Patriarchate and, if necessary, to take measures provided for by law."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

"[Leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church declare] full independence [from Russia, and that its council had] approved the corresponding additions and changes to the Statute on the Management of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, indicating the full autonomy and independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church."

Leadership statement, May 2022

Ukrainian law enforcement officers inspect one of churches of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine November 22, 2022. REUTERS/Vladyslav Musiienko

 

Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople in his role as spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians worldwide, gave permission in 2019 to Ukraine to form a church that would be independent of Moscow. This led to a split in the Orthodox community within Ukraine. Those mostly in eastern Ukraine who wanted to remain loyal to Moscow split from the larger group throughout the country that opted to be independent of the Russian Orthodox Church. And while the Ukrainian Orthodox Church maintained its links to Russia, the breakaway Orthodox Church of Ukraine did not. 

Early in the 'special military operation' that Putin describes the Russian invasion of Ukraine as, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church with whom Vladimir Putin has a close association, fully endorsed Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He might have remained neutral, he might gently have chastised the Russian President for waging a brutal war on a neighbour with whom religious devotion is shared along with a common history (of historic Russian aggression against Ukraine, including the Holodomor) but he chose to give his full support.

This has led to suspicion against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church's role in supporting the Russian invasion.More than that, the suspicion that the church and some of its clerics could be playing an active role in passing critical information along to the Kremlin about internal matters concerning Ukraine. Ukraine's security service raided Orthodox monasteries located in several cities in a search for Russian spies and concealed weapons.

 

Kirill and Putin, in perfect accord   Reuters

 

The Pecherak Lavra in Kyiv, a thousand-year-old monastic community spoken of as the cradle of the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches was searched by the SEU to prevent the use of the Lavra as a centre of the 'Russian world'.": The search was undertaken to "protect the population from provocations and terrorist acts" and to investigate allegations that church property was being used "to hide sabotage and intelligence groups, foreign citizens, and to store weapons".

The Koretsky Holy Trinity monastery and the Sarny-Polissia Eparchy in Rivne, western Ukraine, were also raided. Armed men in camouflage were shown in footage interviewing cassocked priests. All three of these monasteries are affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a branch against which allegations of of collaboration with Russia has been detected since the war began.

In November Basyl Malynuk, head of he SBU, spoke of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine as "perfect ground for the functioning of an enemy human intelligence network", stating that 33 priests suspected of gathering information or acting as spotters for Russian artillery had been detained since February.  This has been construed as an "act of intimidation" by the Russian Orthodox Church.

"Like many other cases of persecution of believers in Ukraine since 2014 (when Luhansk and Donetsk ethnic-Russian Ukrainian rebels declared those provinces detached from Ukraine and allied with Russia, and Moscow annexed the coveted Crimean peninsula), this act of intimidation is almost certain to go unnoticed by those who call themselves the international human rights community", stated Vladimir Legoida, spokesman for the church.

Abbot of the Pechersk monastery, Metropolitan Pavlo, strenuously denied charges that he had prayed for Russia -- in the wake of footage emerging of people within the monastery singing a pro-Moscow song.

Ukrainian law enforcement officers stand next to an entrance to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery compound, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Nov. 22, 2022.

 

Singing From The Same Hymnal With Slight Deviations

AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino     Pope Francis arrives to attend a ceremony at the Maronite Cathedral of Our Lady of Graces in Nicosia, Cyprus

"I listened and then told him: I don't understand anything about this."

"Brother, we are not state clerics, we cannot use the language of politics but that of Jesus. We are pastors of the same holy people of God."

"Because of this, we must seek avenues of peace, to put an end to the firing of weapons."

"The patriarch cannot transform himself into Putin's altar boy."

"[The] barking of NATO at Russia's door [may have forced Putin to invade]. An anger that I don’t know if you can say was provoked, but maybe facilitated."

Pope Francis

"Patriarch Kirill recalled that at the end of the Soviet era, Russia received an assurance that NATO would not move an inch eastwards. However, this promise was broken, even the former Soviet Baltic republics joined NATO."

"Russia could not and cannot allow this to happen."

Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church says Pope Francis 'chose the wrong tone' over 'Putin's altar boy' comment

So recently reconciled, just as recently distancing themselves from each other's positions. The inescapable political dimensions aligned with religious convictions has placed two elite ranking clerics, each of whom assumes the position of shepherd over vast flocks of followers at odds with one another. The caution of diplomacy appears to have fled the scene when Pope Francis spoke frankly of the division between the world of religion and that of politics.

 

Except that for the fact that his further statements bridged that division. And has left simmering resentment of his sentiments and clumsy analogy linking Patriarch Kirill with Russian President Vladimir Putin to the extent that the Patriarch is fully in support of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine. Not the least bit reflective of a high-placed and esteemed leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church's assumed leading concern; that of peace and brotherhood.

 

Nothing can quite lead to a justification of Mr. Putin's order to the Russian military to launch an invasion of its neighbour. In the process destroying entire towns and villages, civic infrastructure, bombing hospitals, rail stations, schools, apartment buildings and even supposedly safe corridors arranged for people to escape the confines of a besieged city. And then there is the rape, the looting, the incidental murders.

 

Pope Francis himself failed to condemn the very leader by name when he despaired over the conflict. Somehow finding it politically diplomatic to abhor the war in its strident brutality but overlooking the mention of exactly who was responsible for launching it. And now buying the Russian president's grievance at NATO's expansion to excuse the rage a despotic ruler succumbed to, taking his revenge over a perceived betrayal of unity with Russia, to innocent civilian populations suffering the onslaught.

There is, thus, a degree of agreement between the two clerics; Pope Francis's on a more modest scale than Patriarch Kirill's, but each sympathetic to Russia's president's paranoia and purpose in choosing to destroy Ukraine to teach his Slavic cousins a lesson. Pope Francis, in his media interview in Italy described his conversation with his Orthodox counterpart who listed off justifications for the war, in a pre-printed agenda he read from.

The Russian Orthodox Church had its own version of the Zoom conference between the two elder Church statesmen: "It's regrettable that a month and a half after the conversation with Patriarch Kirill, Pope Francis chose the  wrong tone to convey the content of this conversation." It was, after all, a confidence betrayal of a colleague, housed in language more fitting to a flippant exchange between two low-ranking sport figures than the top echelon of Christianity.

How can they bring peace and harmony, in other words, to their parishioners when they themselves bicker between their chosen positions? In setting the record straight, the Orthodox Church added "the Pope said, in agreement with the Patriarch, that 'the Church must not use the language of politics, but the language of Jesus'." A senior cleric which has over 100 million followers, as opposed to an infinitely more senior cleric whose following numbers 1.34 billion.