At Sunday worship in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow Patriarch Kirill said that ungodliness became Ukraine’s state ideology. It was reported by Russian agency TASS, according to Radio Liberty.
“Everyone may believe or not - it is a personal choice. But when ungodliness becomes the state ideology and as a result people are dying, temples get destroyed - this is more than ideology ... Our Church has overcome all that, and Ukrainian people will overcome it too, that is what we pray abut in our churches,” Patriarch Kirill of Moscow said.
According to him, the Orthodox Church prays every day, “asking that militant atheism receded and no longer manifested itself through state power.”
Patriarch also said that he made no division between believers in Russia and Ukraine.
“We do not divide the people of Ukraine, it is our flock, Orthodox believers who witness Christ since the baptism in the waters of the Dnieper,” said the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Earlier, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) stated that it opposed the war waged in the east of Ukraine. That was the explanation of the hierarch when asked why he had not stood up on May 8 in Parliament when the names of Heroes of Ukraine who died in the ATO were had been read out.
Over the entire period of occupation of Crimea and hostilities in Donbas, the leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) have not condemned the actions of the aggressor country.