Russian World Ideology is a challenge to all Christianity, - head of the UGCC

His Beatitude Sviatoslav expressed such an opinion in an interview with the Ivano-Frankivsk regional television, reports the UGCC Information Department.

"When a religious institution begins to justify war... when it turns into a propaganda machine... when it promotes Orthodox shahidism, then it follows the path of the Islamic State. The Islamic world has already experienced something similar. Then, thank God, there was strength among the Muslim sages to reject and condemn this ideology," the head of the UGCC said.

"Today, the Christian world faces a challenge. If the Christian Church has given rise to an ideology — the ideology of the Russian World, which is essentially genocidal... then one can doubt its ecclesial nature," he added.

The Primate of the UGCC believes that this doctrine poses a threat to all Christianity and goes beyond the borders of one church and even orthodoxy.

"Many times, when I spoke in various forums with Orthodox and Protestant theologians and church leaders, I thought of this as a challenge for all of Christianity. After all, this type of use of the Christian religion for geopolitical purposes, justifying the atrocities and crimes of the totalitarian regime, is a challenge to the likelihood of preaching the Gospel of Christ to a person of the third millennium. That is, de facto, we see here a great danger to the credibility of the church essence itself, and this goes beyond the borders of one church and even Orthodoxy. Therefore, I have called on the entire Christian world... to give a proper assessment of such a murderous ideology. If we do not have the same courage as the Muslim world, if we, as Christians, do not reject the ideology of the Russian World, and do not have the antibodies of Christian conscience, then this can become a great danger for the future of Christianity in the third millennium," said His Beatitude Sviatoslav.