Clergy in at least two dioceses — Lviv and Volodymyr-Volynskaare — are calling for independence from the Moscow church, according to their Facebook pages.
Many Ukrainian Orthodox are shocked that Kirill “condemned evil in the broadest terms but said nothing about the war let alone its initiation by Russia,” said Catherine Wanner, a Pennsylvania State University professor of history, anthropology and religious studies.
“In the violence and the deaths and the terror that is engulfing Ukraine right now, I don’t think anyone is worried about specific jurisdictions,” said Wanner, whose studies focus on the region. “But this will be a sea change.”
The Rev. Cyril Hovorun, professor of ecclesiology, international relations and ecumenism at University College Stockholm, said Kirill’s latest comments show him to be in a “golden cage.”
He said Kirill helped “supply the ideology” that Putin has used to justify Russian hegemony over the region, and in return the church has received strong government support.
“Even if he (Kirill) understands what is going on in Ukraine with the war, even if he wants to speak up and name things by their proper name, he can’t,” said Hovorun, author of several books about Orthodoxy in Ukraine and beyond. “He is a completely unfree figure that needs to follow faithfully the official narrative.”
Archbishop Daniel of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA said Patriarch Kirill’s latest comments were “incomprehensible.”
“Regardless of our beliefs and regardless of our stance on social and moral issues, you cannot use that as a propaganda tool to justify the Russian invasion and the slaughter of innocent people,” he said.
Many Orthodox and other religious conservatives, including in Ukraine, share Kirill’s stance on sexual ethics, said the Rev. John Burgess, a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of “Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia.”
“But Ukrainians and Ukrainian Orthodox are under attack, are suffering, are afraid for the future for the nation,” Burgess said. “None of that is reflected in the sermon. If rockets are falling Kharkiv and Kyiv, and the patriarch starts talking about gay parades, it seems like something is odd here.”
Burgess said the practice of refusing to commemorate a patriarch in prayer has precedents. Some Russian Orthodox priests suffered persecution under communist rule for refusing commemorate a patriarch they deemed too compromising with the Bolshevik government.
The clerics currently distancing themselves from Kirill could be “risking their very future,” Burgess said.
“If President Putin and the Russians truly prevail in Ukraine, what will happen to these bishops?” he said. “They’ll be removed, or they’ll have to go into the underground.”
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
This article originally appeared here.
