According to Patriarch Filaret, the idea to anathematize and dismiss him from the Church authority position was proposed in 1992 by the present Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill Gundyaev, who was then Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad.
The idea to anathemize Patriarch Filaret and dismiss him from the church authority position was proposed in 1992 by the present head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill Gundyaev, who was then Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the Head of the Kyivan Patriarchate, Patriarch Filaret, said in an interview to RISU posted on December 23.
“He was then the head of the Department of External Relations and worked in close contact with the state authorities. The state and Russian Church were one. The initiatives regarding Ukraine resulted from the unity of these two forces. Patriarch Alexis only headed ROC, whereas it was Kirill who acted as the driving force and tool in the events. All the ideas at the councils of 1992 were proposed by him: both the idea to dismiss me and the idea to hold the Kharkiv council. And the anathema is his idea,” said Patriarch Filaret.
The hierarch admitted that they worked together for a few years and their relations deteriorated when Bishop Kirill gained real influence in the church.
“When he was appointed head of the Department of External Relations in 1989, he became a member of the Synod and received the levers of government of the church. I think that he began to change his attitude toward me exactly after that,” noted Patriarch Filaret.
And when Alexis was elected patriarch he remained the head of the department and gradually accumulated very many things under his control. I think it was then, in 1990, that he began to view me as a competitor in the government of the Russian Church, in the Synod. And at that time he began to develop plans to dismiss me as he knew that he would not be able to direct me as he directed Alexis,” added the patriarch.
The personal motives of Bishop Kirill to dismiss Metropolitan Filaret of the UOC coincided with the interests of the Russian state. According to the head of the Kyivan Patriarchate, the conservative part of the politicians of Russia viewed the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) as the pledge of retaining Ukraine in the field of view of Russia and its future integration in a common state.
“In 1991-1992, there were two policy lines in the Ruusian leadership, namely, to let Ukraine go without resisting its independence and another one to keep everything as much depended on the Soviet Union as possible. The first idea was represented by Yeltsin and the second one by the security services. And as the security services exerted a great influence on the Moscow Patriarchate from the Soviet times, they agreed with Kirill that it was necessary to dismiss me from the leadership of the UOC to preserve the unified structure of the Russian Church. They planed to use that unified structure not only to exert influence on the new republics but also, if possible, to restore the authority of the Kremlin over Ukraine.”