Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church since 2009, has long shared with Vladimir Putin a professed sympathy with the Russian flavor of fascism espoused by the late Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin. Among other things, when Russia invaded Ukraine Kirill publicly supported Putin’s line that Russian land includes Ukraine, Belarus and elsewhere.
So it’s remarkable that today at Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Kirill reacted to this week’s decision by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to break away from Kirill’s control, saying that he understood the decision, and that:
We fully understand how the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is suffering today.
Although a small sign by itself, this is not the only evidence of cracks in the Moscow patriarchy’s support for the invasion of Ukraine. Kirill vigorously supports Putin’s rhetoric about the causes of the war, but he has not pulled out all the stops. As Paul Gobel wrote yesterday in Eurasia Review, Kirill has not explicitly supported the invasion, nor has the war received the patriarchy’s official blessing, which in any event would require approval of the patriarchy’s Holy Synod or Bishop’s Council.
Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, who in some sense is the number two in the Moscow patriarchy, was surprisingly conciliatory in recent ecumenical meetings with other branches of the Orthodox church, where the big topic is Ukrainian orthodoxy’s break with Moscow. Of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Hilarion said on Russian TV, “I don’t think we should consider them enemies.” Efi Efthimiou speculated Friday in the Orthodox Times that Hilarion is positioning himself as something of an alternative to Kirill’s support for the war. Perhaps Kirill’s expression of sympathy for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church today is a sign of further political maneuvering within the Moscow patriarchy.
Although these religious matters may seem unimportant to non-Christians, they are a big deal in Ukraine. Ukrainians are more religious than Russians and most other Europeans. To give some context, the Razumkov Centre’s 2021 survey found that:
- 23% of Ukrainians identified with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is part of Roman Catholicism and has never been part of the Moscow patriarchate. This church is mostly in the west of Ukraine.
- 22% identified with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), reestablished in 1990 as being independent from Moscow. Its 2019 recognition by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople angered the Moscow patriarchy.
- 21% identified with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which broke away from the Moscow patriarchy this week, after many of its parishes had already defected from it.
- 7% said “simply Orthodox”.
- 7% said “simply Christian”.
- 5% said “I do not belong to any religion”.
This week’s breakaway from Moscow by the UOC means that effectively Kirill has ceded control over the faithful in Ukraine, except for areas occupied by the Russian army. One cannot help but hope that faithful Christians within the Russian Orthodox Church can discourage Kirill from further cheerleading of Putin, and help put an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.