“The war in Ukraine is destroying relations between Christians; it is the great schism of Orthodoxy. There are twice as many practicing Ukrainian Orthodox as there are Russian Orthodox. Most of the dioceses that remained under Moscow jurisdiction after the proclamation of autocephaly in 2018 have decided not to cite Patriarch Kirill’s name in their liturgies anymore. All the other national Orthodox Churches will have to take a more explicit position on what is happening” wrote Stefano Caprio. He continued:
“The war in Ukraine began in 2014 when the Maidan Revolution brought to the fore the opposition between Kyiv and Moscow, a centuries-old confrontation that today has reached its most extreme point.
Whatever the outcome of military operations, peace negotiations and the division of territories, deep and inextricable rancour will remain between the two brotherly peoples, drawing a line between not only Slavs and Europeans, but also between different geopolitical and ideological alignments across the world.
We are all “either Russians or Ukrainians”, “a little Russian and a little Ukrainian”, “neither Russian nor Ukrainian” as this tragedy reshapes the conscious-ness of the men and women of the 21st century, much more than Islamic terrorism in this century’s first 20 years.
This war is destroying relations between Christians much more than all the alternatives and contradictions between East and West, globalizers and sovereigntists, Atlanticists and pacifists, neo-Nazis and theorists of real or alleged conspiracies.
For weeks, religious leaders around the globe had been begging the bearded patriarch to speak out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But in weekly sermons that air live on Russian TV, Kirill, 75, has done just the opposite, painting the war as an apocalyptic battle against evil forces that have sought to destroy the God-given unity of Holy Russia.