San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Russia blames the U.S. for Eastern Orthodox schism
Russia has sought to justify its assault on Ukraine with complaints about NATO's eastward expansion, it has also claimed that foreign actors have encroached on its religious turf in Ukraine — even alleging the United States helped instigate an Eastern Orthodox schism there.
Moscow Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said both the West and a rival patriarch were “pursuing the same end” of seeking to weaken Russia and “make the brotherly peoples — Russians and Ukrainians — enemies.”
While hardly the only factor in the war, the religious grievance shouldn't be overlooked, experts say.
“You cannot call it a religious war, but it has a religious dimension,” said the Rev. Cyril Hovorun, an Orthodox priest, native of Ukraine and professor of ecclesiology, international relations and ecumenism at University College Stockholm.
Kirill made his comments in reply to a letter from the acting head of the World Council of Churches, who had called on him to “raise up your voice” and mediate with authorities to stop the war in Ukraine.
Kirill replied that the war wasn't the fault of Russian authorities. Instead, he claimed the seeds of the conflict were sown by foreign threats to its borders, both political and religious.
He cited the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, who in 2019 formally recognized the independence of the Orthodox
Church of Ukraine — in a country where the Moscow Patriarchate claims jurisdiction. The ecumenical patriarch, based in Turkey, is considered “first among equals” among Orthodox patriarchs but, unlike a pope, doesn't have authority beyond his own territory.
In January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the U.S. of being “directly involved in the ongoing crisis in Orthodoxy” and of having “financed Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople so he could pursue a policy of divide, including in Ukraine.”
He didn't offer evidence of such alleged manipulation, though U.S. officials spoke in support of Ukrainians' right to religious self-determination.
The majority of Russians and Ukrainians are Orthodox, but the controversy goes deeper than numbers.
Patriarch Kirill is a longWhile
time supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both have promoted the concept of a “Russian world,” forged in a millennium of shared Orthodox Christian culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Ukrainians have asserted that they're a separate people, though related to Russians. But in the run-up to the war, Putin belittled modern Ukraine as an illegitimate Soviet invention. He alleged that Ukrainian Orthodox who remained loyal to Moscow were under threat.
The Russian-world concept forms some of the backdrop to Kirill's first major wartime sermon, on March 6. He claimed there was a “metaphysical” struggle at stake in Ukraine. He depicted it as a struggle against a foreign liberal establishment purportedly demanding countries hold “gay parades” as the price of admission to a world of excess consumption and freedom.