Patriarch Kirill of Moscow called it "a crime to interfere in the affairs of the Church for political purposes."
"The interference of politicians in church affairs that we have seen in Ukraine, an attempt to destroy the unity of the Russian Church in favor of geopolitical plans and instant benefits, is a crime before the people, before future generations," the patriarch of Moscow said in his address on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations. This is reported by Interfax.
According to the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Church unity is "a historical fact, the most important and integral component of the spiritual and cultural community of our fraternal peoples - Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Latvians, Estonians and many others."
The Patriarch of Moscow also did not ignore Bartholomew I, calling "the schism of world Orthodoxy committed by the patriarch of Constantinople" one of the most pressing and urgent challenges of our time.