From the Pastor’s Desk

Dear Parishioners,

When Russia invaded the Ukraine in 2022, Patriarch Kirill, the Patriarch of Moscow who was/is an ally of President Putin, saw

the war as a defense against the West, which he considers decadent, especially in the areas of sexuality and capitalism. There are

about 260 million Orthodox Christians in the world, of which about 100 million live in Russia. The rest live outside of Russia,

including the Ukraine. The Ukraine is of great importance to the Russian Orthodox Church because in the tenth century, Byzantine

Orthodox missionaries converted the pagan Prince Volodymyr, and Christianity entered into the Russian lands through Kiev, the

capital of the Ukraine.

Patriarch Kirill’s positive stance on the war in the Ukraine has created a chasm between the Russian Orthodox Church and other

Orthodox churches as well as Christian churches. When I wrote about the Orthodox leaders in the Church at the beginning of the

war, Patriarch Kirill had already broken ties with Istanbul’s Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who acts as a first among equals in

the whole Orthodox world, because he lacks the independence of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church.

On February 24, 2022, Patriarch Bartholomew called for prayer for peace, otherwise the war might “trigger global warfare.”

Different Patriarchs, each representing their separate churches, have called for an end to the war and that “Such war has no

justification neither with God, nor with people,” others calling for an immediate end to the fratricidal war—the list of condemnations

continues to this day.

On March 9, the head of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which had cut ties with the Russian Orthodox Church in 2019, stated

that “the Russian occupiers” would have “to answer before God for the conflict” and promised, by God, no mercy and eternal

suffering for their crimes and unmerciful actions. The bishop went so far as to liken Putin to the Antichrist and Adolf Hitler.

The Orthodox Church, which was held together through the difficulties of the past, is splintering apart because Patriarch Kirill

sided with Putin so that when Russia would take control of Ukraine, the Orthodox Christians in the Ukraine would be forced to

rejoin the Russian Orthodox Church under its leadership. Who knows what would happen to the Roman Catholic Ukrainian Church,

which is in union with Rome?

What I have tried to explain is that the war is more than politics and land. It is for the very heart and soul of the Ukrai nian people.