Kirill responded to Sauca but was seemingly unconvinced by his arguments, blaming the war not on Russia but on Western nations.
RELATED: How Putin’s invasion became a holy war for Russia
Kirill has spent years laying spiritual groundwork for a face-off with the West and has intensified his rhetoric since the outbreak of war: Over the past two months, he referred to Russia’s enemies in Ukraine as “evil forces” and preached a sermon accusing the liberal West of corrupting other countries with a vanguard of gay pride parades.
Hundreds of Orthodox theologians recently decried Kirill’s vision of a “Russian world” that includes Ukraine, calling it a heresy, and leaders of an Orthodox tradition in Ukraine that broke away from the ROC in 2019 have chided Kirill as “discredited” and likened Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Antichrist.
Kirill is also facing emerging dissent among his own priests. At least one cleric in Russia was fined for speaking out against the war, and many priests in Ukraine with formal loyalties to Moscow have stopped commemorating Kirill during worship. Hundreds of priests reportedly signed a letter last week accusing the patriarch of preaching “heresy” and asking church authorities to consider his ouster.
The Rev. Franklin Graham, who once praised Putin and Kirill after a visit to Russia in 2015, has also called for a cease-fire in the region during the Easter season — although he directed his request at Putin and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.
