In a small parish in northern Italy affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, the mostly Ukrainian believers — IT specialists, migrant factory workers, nurses and cleaners — decided to withhold full support for the war in Ukraine from Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. ways.
The Moscow Patriarch had repeatedly bestowed blessings on the Russian army, for example giving a historic gold icon of the Virgin Mary to a high commander and portraying the war as a holy struggle to protect Russia from what he called Western plagues, such as gay pride parades . He has been an outspoken supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin, and the Church has received huge funding for this.
“We saw that the Moscow Patriarchate was not concerned with theology, it was just interested in supporting the ideology of the state,” said Archpriest Volodymyr Melnichuk of the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross in Udine, Italy, “In essence, the Patriarch betrayed his Ukrainian herd.”
So, on March 31, the Ukrainian cleric wrote a letter in which he cut all ties with the Moscow Patriarchate.
As Eastern Orthodox Easter approaches this Sunday, similar tensions ripple through the Church’s more than 200 million faithful, concentrated in Eastern and Southern Europe. Around the world, the war is dividing national churches, parishes and even families as they rethink relations with Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church.
In the United States, some believers switch churches. In France, Orthodox seminary students begged their bishop to break with the Moscow Patriarchate. In the Netherlands, the police had to intervene at a Rotterdam church after parishioners clashed over the war.
The war in Ukraine has pitted fighters under the Moscow Patriarch against each other and has placed Ukrainian believers in a particularly untenable position. Traditionally, Orthodox believers pray for their patriarch at all services.
“How can you accept prayers for the patriarch who blesses the soldiers who try to kill your son?” said Andreas Loudaros, editor of Orthodoxia.info, an Athens-based church affairs website.
Doctrinal disputes and intrigue within the Eastern Orthodox Church often span decades, if not centuries. But with remarkable speed, the war has magnified the schisms that have long been kept beneath the surface.
Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, with its single, undisputed leader, each of the 15 Orthodox branches enjoys considerable sovereignty. Heated debates have erupted within the Eastern Orthodox Church in many countries as to whether they should openly ban Patriarch Kirill and Russia.
The Moscow Patriarchate has tried to anoint itself the true seat of Orthodoxy since Constantinople, now Istanbul, fell to Muslim invaders in 1453. Moscow has thus been at odds for centuries with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, always the spiritual leader of the Church. But the strained relations between Kirill and the current Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, came to light during the war.
“He should not have identified so much with President Putin and even called the Russian war against Ukraine ‘holy’,” the patriarch recently told a group of students.
“It is damaging to the prestige of all Orthodoxy because Orthodoxy does not support war, violence and terrorism,” Bartholomew said in an interview in Istanbul.
Ukraine has been a particular source of enmity between the two hierarchs. In 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew granted independence, dubbed “autocephaly,” to a previously unapproved church in Ukraine, which had been subordinate to Moscow since 1686.
After that, the Russian Church broke off contacts with Bartholomew. More than half of Ukrainian parishes rejected the decision and remained under Moscow’s jurisdiction.
Of the 45 dioceses in Ukraine, which include nearly 20,000 parishes, about 22 have stopped mentioning Patriarch Kirill during prayers, said Sergei Chapnin, a Russian religious scholar and frequent church critic.
That is the first step towards a break with Moscow, albeit far from a formal break. But the dispute is making it difficult for many Ukrainian bishops to switch allegiances now.
Some believers in Ukraine question the bishops’ silence and wonder aloud if they are fans of Mr Putin, have been bribed or blackmailed into silence or hedge their bets that Moscow will not prevail in the war.
Archpriest Andriy Pinchuk, 44, the former mayor of a small agricultural village just south of the central city of Dnipro, said the hesitation baffled many pastors. Russian troops have destroyed countless churches.
“We are ashamed to look ordinary Ukrainians in the eye, we are ashamed of the terribly aggressive words Patriarch Kirill constantly says, we are ashamed of the Ukrainian bishops who are burying their heads in the sand and fearing a break with the Moscow Patriarch . ‘ said Father Pinchuk. Ukrainians are a significant part of the Moscow Patriarch’s flock, so losing them would be a blow.
Father Pinchuk is the author of a petition signed by some 400 Ukrainian clerics asking church hierarchs to declare Kirill’s support for the Kremlin’s Russkii Mir project or the “Russian World” project as heresy, which has, among other things, attempted to influence the influence of the church outside of Russia as a foreign policy tool.
“The future of any church in Ukraine will not be tied to Moscow unless it wins this war,” said Christophe D’Aloisio, visiting professor of Eastern Christian and Ecumenical Studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium and an Orthodox pastor, who signed in March issued a statement against the “Russian World” project by more than 1,300 Orthodox scholars and theologians. “But it’s the wrong time to position yourself for or against.”
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has provoked widespread anger with a series of sermons and speeches, including saying the country is fighting the Antichrist, and urging Russians to rally behind the government. Kirill has avoided condemning widely documented attacks on civilians, many of whom are his parishioners. Most national churches have not condemned Kirill.
War between Russia and Ukraine: important developments
One possible reason emerges from the website of the Foundation for the Support of Christian Culture and Heritage, which is funded by Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company. It provides an overview of church projects that have been funded around the world in Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, Serbia and the United States, among others.
Numerous recipients did not denounce the war. “When you get money from Moscow, it’s not easy to be critical,” said Mr. D’Aloisio.
About 300 priests, mostly in Russia, signed a petition against the war. Three Lithuanian priests who were outspoken critics have just been fired.
In the United States, some supporters expressed anger that although the two main American branches of Russian descent, the Orthodox Church in America and the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia, had condemned the fighting and made efforts to help refugees, they avoided Patriarch Kirill. directly criticize.
An influx of converts in recent years, drawn by President Putin portraying himself as a bulwark against the moral collapse of the West, has exacerbated the bickering.
“It has torn the church apart in a way,” said Rev. Dr. John Jillions, a retired associate professor of religion and former parish priest in Bridgeport, Conn. “I think they are too hesitant, they need to come out much more forcefully against Putin’s aggression and the apparent support of Patriarch Kirill.”
Many people wonder why St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers accepted a $250,000 donation from the Russian State Religious Foundation to name a chair in Bible studies after Kirill, suggesting that the money be returned or given to Ukrainians. refugees.
Most Reverend Dr. Chad Hatfield, the seminary president, said the donation had been received and reviewed before the invasion, and that the Orthodox Church of America had condemned the war.
Archpriest Victor Potapov in Washington, DC, speaking on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia, called it wrong to blame Russia and said the church fervently prayed that the war would end.
Some parishioners are switching churches because of the issue. “This is not my church, I cannot go to a church run by a patriarch who supports war,” said Lena S. Zezulin. She left her church, the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Seraphim in Sea Cliff, Long Island, where she was baptized. She can’t convince her 90-year-old mother to stop.
In any case, a serious rift in the church seems inevitable, but the course of the war will determine the depth and scar tissue that remains.
On Palm Sunday, sitting in the courtyard of an Orthodox church frequented by Ukrainians in Istanbul, Nadiia Kliuieva shrugged off the terrible legacy of a Kirill-sanctified conflict, including murdered children, raped women and the pain of Ukrainians everywhere.
“I don’t know what kind of Ukrainian you have to be to maintain a relationship with the Moscow Patriarchate,” she said. “I think a lot of people have opened their eyes.”
Neil MacFarquhar from Istanbul and Sophia Kishkovsky from Long Island.