Unorthodox Church

Father Pluzhnik belonged to the branch of the Russian Orthodox Church which takes its direction from its religious leadership in Moscow. Recently he applied to join the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Many fellow priests who followed Patriarch Kirill in Moscow are doing the same because of the Church leader's stance on the war. Not only in Ukraine,  Russian Orthodox church in Amsterdam also has announced split with Moscow. 

The head of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, a trusted ally of Vladimir Putin, has declined to condemn the Kremlin’s decision to invade its neighbor, referring to Russia’s opponents in Ukraine as “evil forces”. In a Sunday sermon last week he also said gay pride parades organized in the west were part of the reason for the war in Ukraine.

Such negative reaction to the Russian Orthodox Church is shared by more than 280 Russian Orthodox priests and church officials from around the world signed an open letter expressing their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It said “eternal torment” awaited those who gave “murderous orders”.

For Russian Orthodox nationalists -however- Putin is fulfilling the prophecy of a twentieth-century saint from Chernihiv, now one of Ukraine’s beleaguered cities. “Just as the One Lord God is the indivisible Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” this monk foretold, “so Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus together are Holy Rus’ and cannot be separated.”

It looks like Patriarch Kirill to pay  a colossal price for loyalty to Putin. A third of his parishes and monasteries are located in Ukraine. Orthodox abroad have condemned the war—including Kirill’s own bishops in Estonia and Lithuania—along with Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Instead of a Russian World, the Moscow Patriarch may soon find his authority stopping at the borders of the Russian Federation.