![]() He has been criticised, however, for suggesting in an interview last week with Corriere della Sera that NATO bore some responsibility for the conflict by “barking at Russia’s door”, and also for questioning whether Western countries were right to supply Ukraine with weapons. He told the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity that the crisis could not “fail to challenge the conscience of every Christian and every Church”. The Pope has continued to urge church leaders to oppose the “cruel and senseless war” as a threat to world peace. Their statement coincided with a missile attack on the blockaded Black Sea port of Odesa, and a report by council officials in Mariupol, who said that more than 800 war crimes had been reported by residents fleeing the besieged city. On Tuesday, the United Nations human-rights monitoring mission said that Ukraine’s civilian death toll could be much higher than previously reported. The Victory Day parades took place as US intelligence sources warned of a stalemate as Russia’s latest offensive was held back in eastern Ukraine, sustaining heavy losses around Avdiivka, north of Donetsk. ![]() Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko) told a Kyiv congregation on Sunday: “For decades, it seemed that such an evil as Nazism could not be repeated in Europe - but next to us, in the neighbouring country, whose people suffered much in that war, the evil of Nazism has now grown again, nurtured by false propaganda and fierce hatred of truth and freedom, by a desire for war and bloodshed, as Russian fascism does the devil’s work, sowing ruin and death.” According to his Church’s website, he also prayed for soldiers killed “defending Ukraine during the current war” and for “deliverance from the enemy”.īy contrast, the leader of Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church vowed that his country would emerge spiritually strengthened from victory over “the new antichrist Putin”, regaining its territory and becoming “united, independent, democratic, and European”. The head of Ukraine’s Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Onufriy (Berezovsky), held requiem liturgies for fallen Second World War fighters in Kyiv’s Holy Dormition church. We do not need this, since we are self-sufficient.” Nor does it want to drain resources from anyone, as most of the world’s rich and powerful countries do by economically occupying weak and helpless countries. “Russia does not wish harm to anyone, or to capture and occupy anyone. ![]() He told military personnel: “We must consolidate all our forces, both spiritual and material, so no one dares encroach on our Fatherland’s sacred borders. On a separate occasion, when he spoke at Moscow’s Military Cathedral, Patriarch Kirill dismissed as “nonsense” claims that he had made “militaristic speeches”, and said that Russia sought only “true freedom, regardless of those world power centres that are becoming hostile to it today”. The Orthodox Church was “not in the rearguard or even on the flanks, but at the front”, Patriarch Kirill said, as it strove “to protect the people and educate them in faith and love for the Fatherland, in the capacity to resist standards of life, behaviour patterns and philosophical ideas alien to the Orthodox faith and the people’s historical tradition”. ![]() He said that Russian troops had resisted “enslavement” by Nazi Germany thanks to their people’s “strength of spirit”, and welcomed the “new direction” now being taken by church-army relations in the country. The Patriarch was speaking a day before joining President Vladimir Putin, government and military officials on Monday’s Victory Day, which was marked by military parades in Moscow and other cities. At such a time, our Church and armed forces must work especially together to instil in the people a sense of patriotism, loyalty to ideals and readiness to defend the Fatherland.” “The prosperous, comfortable situation in which we live today often contributes to relaxing a person’s will and a dependence on certain life conditions. “We must all work to ensure that our Fatherland becomes strong and invincible,” Patriarch Kirill said at a wreath-laying ceremony near the Kremlin Wall on Sunday. LEADERS of the Russian Orthodox Church took part in Russia’s annual Victory Day celebrations this week.
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