Russian Orthodox church announces split with Moscow over Ukraine invasion
Categories: FOREIGN COUNTRIES
Russian Orthodox church in Amsterdam has announced a split with Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.“The clergy unanimously announced that it is no longer possible for them to function within the Moscow patriarchate and provide a spiritually safe environment for our faithful,” the clergy said in a statement.Russian Patriarch Kirill's full-throated blessing for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine has splintered the worldwide Orthodox Church and unleashed an internal rebellion that experts say is unprecedented. Kirill, 75, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, sees the war as a bulwark against a West he considers decadent, particularly over the acceptance of homosexuality.He and Putin share a vision of the "Russkiy Mir", or "Russian World", linking spiritual unity and territorial expansion aimed at parts of the ex-Soviet Union.What Putin sees as a political restoration, Kirill sees as a crusade. But the patriarch has sparked a backlash at home as well as among Churches abroad linked to the Moscow Patriarchate. The Amsterdam branch of the Russian Orthodox Church is not the only one to object to the position taken by the church's leader.In Russia, nearly 300 Orthodox members of a group called Russian Priests for Peace signed a letter condemning the "murderous orders" carried out in Ukraine. "The people of Ukraine should make their choice on their own, not at gunpoint, without pressure from the West or the East," it read, referring to millions in Ukraine now split between Moscow and Kyiv.Moscow says its action is a "special military operation" designed not to occupy territory but to demilitarise and "de-Nazify" its neighbour.Of 260 million Orthodox Christians in the world, about 100 million are in Russia itself and some of those abroad are in unity with Moscow.