The Orthodox Church of Ukraine wrote an official letter to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. In it, the OCU asked to persuade Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to abandon the ideology of the “Russian world”.
The draft letter was approved on May 11 at the Bishops' Council of the OCU.
It is noted that the theological academies of the OCU analyzed the text of the “order” “World Russian People's Council”, held under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church in March 2024. In the document of this “council” Russian aggression against Ukraine is called a “holy war”.
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The OCU indicates that the text of the council was distributed through the pages of the Russian Orthodox Church, and numerous speeches by Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev indicate that he himself is a supporter of the ideology of the “Russian world”. This doctrine provides that Ukraine cannot be an independent state, Ukrainians and Belarusians do not exist as separate peoples, and Russia is a “spiritual civilization”, leading the fight against “the world evil of the West” ;, explained in the OCU.
Letter to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
The letter notes that Moscow Orthodoxy has moved away from Christian teaching because it promotes the cult of violence and justifies rapists, and also uses the Church as a means for the Russian leadership to achieve its political goal.
Therefore, the OCU asked the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to appeal to the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill with a demand to publicly renounce the false teaching of the “Russian world” and condemn, revoke the order of the “people's council”. And if Kirill does not listen, then the OCU called on him to be considered a “pagan and publican”.
In addition, the bishops of the OCU added that the Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin, who considers himself a layman of the Russian Orthodox Church, with his crimes and “stubborn, conscious non-repentance for public sins” he excommunicated himself from the Church.
