Following the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) celebrates Easter this weekend – the most important religious festival of its liturgical year. One priest who will not be leading a service is Dmitry Safronov, a prominent Moscow cleric. In March, Mr Safronov presided over a memorial service at the grave of Alexei Navalny, following the dissident’s death in unexplained circumstances in an Arctic penal colony. He was subsequently suspended from the priesthood for three years and can no longer preach or wear a cassock.
Such is the degraded state of the ROC under the leadership of Patriarch Kirill, the theological cheerleader for Russia’s blood-soaked campaign to reintegrate Ukraine into “Holy Rus”. Kirill’s ever more strident backing of Vladimir Putin’s illegal war led Pope Francis to warn him against becoming “Putin’s altar boy”. But his role in sustaining support for the Kremlin’s neo-imperial ambitions, and justifying repression at home, is far more senior than that.
A near-contemporary of Mr Putin who allegedly also worked for the KGB, the leader of the Moscow Patriarchate views the war as a spiritual cause, and is one of its most relentless propagandists. In well‑publicised sermons and a weekly broadcast on state television, Kirill has – in the words of one Orthodox academic – given Mr Putin’s “Russian world” irredentism “a metaphysical, eschatological and messianic spin”. With dissenting voices such as Father Safronov ruthlessly silenced, the ROC has become the religious wing of the Kremlin’s war machine.
Prominent voices, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have urged strong action in response from the global Christian community. But in the hope of exerting influence and maintaining unity, there has been a reluctance to exclude Kirill’s ROC from various ecumenical organisations. More than two years into the war, that position is surely becoming unsustainable. At the end of March, Kirill used his chairmanship of the World Russian People’s Council – a post-Soviet nationalist organisation he founded in 1993 – to approve a decree describing the conflict in Ukraine as a “holy war” against the west, and calling for the entirety of the country to be absorbed under Russian control. In response, the World Council of Churches (WCC) has warned that if such views represent those of the ROC – its biggest member – it would risk expulsion. For as long as the Moscow Patriarchate remains under the authority of Kirill, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion.
At the height of the cold war, operating in an aggressively atheist state, leaders of the ROC played a valiant role as part of an international peace movement. In the shadow of a potential nuclear conflict – a menace that has returned to haunt our own times – representatives consistently argued that it was the responsibility of the Kremlin as well as the west to defuse tensions. Such a stance accorded with the modern understanding within churches that it is the duty of Christians to be peacemakers in times of conflict.
Patriarch Kirill’s embrace of an unprovoked war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives is a malign inversion of that gospel message, and a betrayal of the church he heads. By continuing to embody the religious nationalism which justifies the slaughter, Mr Putin’s religious ally has brought a proud Christian institution into disrepute.
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